I was concerned about google writing an OS - Now I see the funny side
john
I thought you may like this:
Clearly the computing world is vanishing into what one recent writer
called "cloud cuckoo land" where big brother (aka HAL2010) decides
what programs you can and can't run depending mostly on the weather
and of course whether or not your broadband happens to be up or down
that day.... anyway...
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Google now announces a new programming language (which explicitly
targets C++ users) it calls "Go"
Whilst I applaud anything that points out how bad C++ really is I
just havn't been able to stop laughing since I read about "GO".
As much for what Google seems to think important as anything else.
You can check out some of it here
http://golang.org/doc/go_for_cpp_programmers.html
Where - in it's list of conceptual differences to C++ Google proudly
boasts:
"Strings are provided by the language. They may not be changed once
they have been created."
or this one ...
"Hash tables are provided by the language. They are called maps."
or
"Go uses nil for invalid pointers, where C++ uses NULL or simply 0."
Perhaps someone should inform the self proclaimed architects of
tommorows operating systems what the the word "concept" means....
Amongst a few other home truths... ;-)
Now what was that about cloud cuckoo land?
Fortunately they do point out on their tutorial page that
"...[all the] example programs work."
How useful. Examples that work. What will they think of next?
PS.
Thank you all for your comments regarding Forth and OS writing - sorry
to be tardy in my appreciation but I had a few problems.
Some very useful and interesting comments came out.
MarkWills
> I thought you may like this:
>
> Clearly the computing world is vanishing into what one recent writer
> called "cloud cuckoo land" where big brother (aka HAL2010) decides
> what programs you can and can't run depending mostly on the weather
> and of course whether or not your broadband happens to be up or down
> that day.... anyway...
> ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Google now announces a new programming language (which explicitly
> targets C++ users) it calls "Go"
>
> Whilst I applaud anything that points out how bad C++ really is I
> just havn't been able to stop laughing since I read about "GO".
>
> As much for what Google seems to think important as anything else.
>
> Where - in it's list of conceptual differences to C++ Google proudly
> boasts:
>
> "Strings are provided by the language. They may not be changed once
> they have been created."
>
> or this one ...
>
> "Hash tables are provided by the language. They are called maps."
>
> or
>
> "Go uses nil for invalid pointers, where C++ uses NULL or simply 0."
>
> Perhaps someone should inform the self proclaimed architects of
> tommorows operating systems what the the word "concept" means....
>
> Amongst a few other home truths... ;-)
>
> Now what was that about cloud cuckoo land?
>
> Fortunately they do point out on their tutorial page that
> "...[all the] example programs work."
>
> How useful. Examples that work. What will they think of next?
>
> PS.
>
> Thank you all for your comments regarding Forth and OS writing - sorry
> to be tardy in my appreciation but I had a few problems.
>
> Some very useful and interesting comments came out.
My understanding is that GO came about as an easy to use language for
massively threaded applications. The language was developed inside
Google, for use internally. They believe it is pretty cool, its stable
enough, so they've open sourced it. That's it.
I'm as worried about Google 'taking over the world' as anyone, but I
don't see anything sinister or cynical with what they have offered
with the Go language.
I spent some time looking at the site today too. It looks cool to
me ;-)
Mark
Spiros Bousbouras
> As much for what Google seems to think important as anything else.
> You can check out some of it here
> http://golang.org/doc/go_for_cpp_programmers.html
>
> Where - in it's list of conceptual differences to C++ Google proudly
> boasts:
I don't see anything boastful in the page you linked. It is simply a
list of differences.
[...]
> Fortunately they do point out on their tutorial page that
> "...[all the] example programs work."
I think http://golang.org/doc/go_tutorial.html#tmp_331 looks cool.
I don't know enough about concurrent programming to be able to tell
how original it is but it's cool.
[...]
Spiros Bousbouras
>
> I think http://golang.org/doc/go_tutorial.html#tmp_331 looks cool.
> I don't know enough about concurrent programming to be able to tell
> how original it is but it's cool.
It appears that the site is broken and following the link does
not take you to the specific example but to the top of the page.
The example I find cool is the "Prime numbers" one.
John Passaniti
> Where - in it's list of conceptual differences to C++ Google proudly
> boasts:
>
> "Strings are provided by the language. They may not be changed once
> they have been created."
Yes, that is a common feature of several modern programming
languages. And yes, if you don't understand what string immutability
means, I guess it would sound funny.
> "Hash tables are provided by the language. They are called maps."
Yes, that is also another common feature of several modern programming
languages. Having hash tables built into the language usually implies
that they are reused by the language elsewhere. For example, in Lua,
having hash tables as part of the language is much like the Forth
dictionary. New definitions are stored there.
> "Go uses nil for invalid pointers, where C++ uses NULL or simply 0."
Yes that is another common feature of several modern programming
languages. In such languages, "nil" is a separate and distinct thing
from zero. Again, if you don't understand why this is desirable, you
might think think it odd.
> Perhaps someone should inform the self proclaimed architects of
> tommorows operating systems what the the word "concept" means....
Or perhaps you should look at languages like Lua (which have the same
features that you cited, above) and understand what they mean.
> Now what was that about cloud cuckoo land?
I don't know. You misused the term, so it's difficult to know how it
applies here.
> Fortunately they do point out on their tutorial page that
> "...[all the] example programs work."
>
> How useful. Examples that work. What will they think of next?
Actually, given the amount of example code that is posted in
comp.lang.forth with private words, that's not something to scoff at.
The usual pattern around here is that there will be a discussion,
someone will post some code that features some private words, others
will try the code (either with their Forth or in their head), and then
the original author will slap forehead, apologize, and then post the
missing words.
john
<john.pa...@gmail.com> wrote:
>Yes, that is a common feature of several modern programming
>languages. And yes, if you don't understand what string immutability
>means, I guess it would sound funny.
I understand all sorts of things.
The number of people that fall for all manner of fashionable stupidity
time and again is what I find funny.
Trust me - I scoff at all sorts of things I find here.
Particularly all the missed points.
John Passaniti
> I understand all sorts of things.
> The number of people that fall for all manner of fashionable stupidity
> time and again is what I find funny.
Except I don't see it as being "fashionable." Fashionable would be
things that are trendy, new for the sake of being new, popular without
justification, etc. The things you quoted are all quite normal,
mundane, utilitarian features in many modern languages, hardly
fashionable.
After you brought it up, I looked a bit deeper at Go and don't see
much that interests or excites me. And for me the reason is the exact
opposite of what you're saying. I see Go as being almost anti-
fashionable in that it doesn't appear to push any limits, offer any
new ways of thinking, or have facilities that make things radically
better. It looks to me like a utilitarian language for systems
programming. Well, at least they have a cute mascot.
> Trust me - I scoff at all sorts of things I find here.
> Particularly all the missed points.
Well then, I guess I'll continue to miss your point.
John Passaniti
Apparently there is a language that few have ever heard of called
"Go!" and the author of that language entered a issue into Google's
issue tracking system stating that Google should change the name of
their language, "Go" so there wouldn't be any confusion. And
regardless of where you are on that particular debate, there was an
amusing solution offered: Google should name their language "Issue
9". Yes, issue #9 is the issue number that author of "Go!" was
assigned. How postmodern.
Hugh Aguilar
I suggest that the language be called "Goo." That would reference
Google, and also open the door to more puns. Besides that, the name
"Go" seems to be a reference to the Asian board-game Go. This might
not be accidental --- maybe a strong Go program is intended to be the
killer-app of this language. Board-games do lend themselves to
concurrent programming, which is a strong point of Go (the language).
I looked over the website discussing Go and it looked like a pretty
cool language to me. I doubt that I will delve into it though, because
I already have my hands full learning Factor and Erlang. Learning a
language such as Factor involves learning a lot of new terminology and
concepts. Some of these concepts, such as immutable data, would likely
carry over into Go. I have to start my study somewhere though, and
Factor seems like a better starting point than Go given Factor's
similarity to Forth.
Thomas Pornin
> I suggest that the language be called "Goo."
There is already a programming language called "Goo".
With an average of one new programming language every week since the late
sixties, most of the cool acronyms have already been taken.
--Thomas Pornin
Phil Martel
"John Passaniti" <john.pa...@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:fe360735-aafb-4e0a...@a32g2000yqm.googlegroups.com...
Hugh Aguilar
> Well, Plan 9 is already taken...http://plan9.bell-labs.com/plan9/
This is a Forth forum, so I'm getting off the topic somewhat, but do
any of you have answers (or at least hunches) regarding the following
questions?
1.) Will Plan-9 make a comeback? It seemed to be oriented toward
running on multiple processors so it was ahead of its time, but now
these kinds of systems are becoming more realistic due to faster data
transfer technology. This is why Erlang is starting to become
important, so maybe Plan-9 will too.
2.) Will Ubuntu rule the world? I switched over from SUSE to Ubuntu at
the advice of my ISP. Will SUSE and all of those other Linux distros
fade away?
3.) Is Windows used anywhere other than America? Is the rest of the
world leaving us behind?
4.) Whatever became of the Amiga OS? I heard that it was still hanging
on in Germany, and that it had been upgraded from the 68K to the
PowerPC, but that was a long time ago. Is it dead now?
5.) My understanding of why Windows became important was because the
American federal government standardized on Windows for all of its
offices and then the commoners followed along. Is this true? I read
that the Spanish government standardized on Ubuntu recently. Could
America follow suit?
6.) Why is Free-BSD still used for web servers? Does it have any
technical advantage over Linux? Do people mostly use Free-BSD because
of the liberal license that allows them to turn it into a proprietary
OS (as Apple did)?
7.) Is Open-BSD really so much more secure than either Free-BSD or
Linux? Is it primarily secure because it restricts the programs that
get distributed with it to only those that have been examined to make
sure they aren't trojan horses, or is there more to Open-BSD's
security than this?
8.) Whatever became of that OS kernal that Richard Stallman was
developing that was supposed to be so much more efficient than the
Linux kernal, but seemed to always remain vaporware?
9.) Is the Google Chrome OS an evil scheme to take control of
everybody's computer? I read the book, "The Internet, and how to stop
it." This book predicted a future in which computers would be closed
systems --- "applicances" similar to XBox --- that only run software
that has been approved by higher-ups. The concern is that non-
technical users will give away their right to run any software they
want and/or to write software themselves, in exchange for the security
of having "everything they need" handed to them on a silver platter
(no thinking required!). Could this happen?
ron
> After you brought it up, I looked a bit deeper at Go and don't see
> much that interests or excites me.
Agreed, and for the same reasons. It's been quite a while since I got
excited over a programming language, however...
Elizabeth D Rather
...
> 2.) Will Ubuntu rule the world? I switched over from SUSE to Ubuntu at
> the advice of my ISP. Will SUSE and all of those other Linux distros
> fade away?
>
> 3.) Is Windows used anywhere other than America? Is the rest of the
> world leaving us behind?
According to this report:
http://marketshare.hitslink.com/operating-system-market-share.aspx?qprid=8#
Windows' market share worldwide is 92.52%, MacOS 5.27%, Linux 0.96%, and
everything else microscopic.
...
> 9.) Is the Google Chrome OS an evil scheme to take control of
> everybody's computer? I read the book, "The Internet, and how to stop
> it." This book predicted a future in which computers would be closed
> systems --- "applicances" similar to XBox --- that only run software
> that has been approved by higher-ups. The concern is that non-
> technical users will give away their right to run any software they
> want and/or to write software themselves, in exchange for the security
> of having "everything they need" handed to them on a silver platter
> (no thinking required!). Could this happen?
That sounds like a wild overstatement designed to sell books.
Cheers,
Elizabeth
--
==================================================
Elizabeth D. Rather (US & Canada) 800-55-FORTH
FORTH Inc. +1 310.999.6784
5959 West Century Blvd. Suite 700
Los Angeles, CA 90045
http://www.forth.com
"Forth-based products and Services for real-time
applications since 1973."
==================================================
MarkWills
sell books."
You are probably correct Elizabeth, however it would be nice if
'mainstream computers' became locked boxes! Why? Because people would
start building their own machines again, both privately (home-brew)
and commercially, possibly giving rise to a new dawn of multi-
computing platforms, like we had in the home-computer boom of the
80's.
Of course, we all know what the best (and simplest?) programming
language is for home-brew based systems is, right? :-)
Seriously though, (I think I may have lamented about this on this
board before) - I would be all in favour of many different hardware
(and software) platforms. We've all converged on the PC platform, but
that does not mean it is the 'best'. It still carries with it the
baggage of what is effectively a 'legacy' design - those blistering
Intel chips still have to run 1970s 8086 code. I bet the Intel
designers wish they could start with a blank sheet.
Oh well... I guess I'm just saying that a bit of variety would be
nice. Choice.
Mark
Spiros Bousbouras
>
> 2.) Will Ubuntu rule the world? I switched over from SUSE to Ubuntu at
> the advice of my ISP. Will SUSE and all of those other Linux distros
> fade away?
If you mean among all operating systems then I don't expect any non
Microsoft operating system to rule the world anytime soon. If you
mean among Linux distributions still the answer is no. Each
distribution has its fans and the distributions seem to be
proliferating rather than diminishing.
> 7.) Is Open-BSD really so much more secure than either Free-BSD or
> Linux? Is it primarily secure because it restricts the programs that
> get distributed with it to only those that have been examined to make
> sure they aren't trojan horses, or is there more to Open-BSD's
> security than this?
I don't know about Open-BSD but if you read a bit comp.os.vms you'll
see that the people there consider OpenVMS to be much more secure
than any Unix related operating system.
> 8.) Whatever became of that OS kernal that Richard Stallman was
> developing that was supposed to be so much more efficient than the
> Linux kernal, but seemed to always remain vaporware?
If you mean HURD there is a Wikipedia article.
Spiros Bousbouras
>
> Seriously though, (I think I may have lamented about this on this
> board before) - I would be all in favour of many different hardware
> (and software) platforms.
If you want to experiment you can find cheap SUN SPARC-based
workstations on ebay.
MarkWills
Thanks. I see the old VAX 4000-VLC are going cheap as well these days.
Since one can now get a hobbyist licence for VMS, it's quite
attractive. Where would I put all this gear though, I already have a
collection of old computers!
Aleksej Saushev
> On Nov 11, 7:38О©╫pm, "Phil Martel" <pomar...@comcast.net> wrote:
>> Well, Plan 9 is already taken...http://plan9.bell-labs.com/plan9/
>
> This is a Forth forum, so I'm getting off the topic somewhat, but do
> any of you have answers (or at least hunches) regarding the following
> questions?
>
> 1.) Will Plan-9 make a comeback? It seemed to be oriented toward
> running on multiple processors so it was ahead of its time, but now
> these kinds of systems are becoming more realistic due to faster data
> transfer technology. This is why Erlang is starting to become
> important, so maybe Plan-9 will too.
Will Forth make a comeback?
> 2.) Will Ubuntu rule the world? I switched over from SUSE to Ubuntu at
> the advice of my ISP. Will SUSE and all of those other Linux distros
> fade away?
Does SAP or Oracle support Ubuntu? Any other company except Canonical?
> 3.) Is Windows used anywhere other than America?
You won't believe it.
> 5.) My understanding of why Windows became important was because the
> American federal government standardized on Windows for all of its
> offices and then the commoners followed along. Is this true? I read
> that the Spanish government standardized on Ubuntu recently. Could
> America follow suit?
Try to find any certified accounting software for small business
that does _not_ require Windows.
> 6.) Why is Free-BSD still used for web servers? Does it have any
> technical advantage over Linux?
Yes.
> Do people mostly use Free-BSD because
> of the liberal license that allows them to turn it into a proprietary
> OS
No.
> (as Apple did)?
Apple did quite different thing.
> 7.) Is Open-BSD really so much more secure than either Free-BSD or
> Linux?
No, but this isn't the main point today.
> Is it primarily secure because it restricts the programs that
> get distributed with it to only those that have been examined to make
> sure they aren't trojan horses, or is there more to Open-BSD's
> security than this?
No.
> 8.) Whatever became of that OS kernal that Richard Stallman was
> developing that was supposed to be so much more efficient than the
> Linux kernal, but seemed to always remain vaporware?
Mach was never state of the art.
--
HE CE3OH...
Bernd Paysan
> On Nov 11, 7:38 pm, "Phil Martel" <pomar...@comcast.net> wrote:
>> Well, Plan 9 is already taken...http://plan9.bell-labs.com/plan9/
>
> This is a Forth forum, so I'm getting off the topic somewhat, but do
> any of you have answers (or at least hunches) regarding the following
> questions?
>
> 1.) Will Plan-9 make a comeback? It seemed to be oriented toward
> running on multiple processors so it was ahead of its time, but now
> these kinds of systems are becoming more realistic due to faster data
> transfer technology. This is why Erlang is starting to become
> important, so maybe Plan-9 will too.
Plan 9 is more a playground.
> 2.) Will Ubuntu rule the world? I switched over from SUSE to Ubuntu at
> the advice of my ISP. Will SUSE and all of those other Linux distros
> fade away?
No, why should they? If you like KDE (I do), OpenSuSE is way better than
Kubuntu. The whole point with free software is that there is more healthy
competition, so no single ruler of the world can emerge.
> 3.) Is Windows used anywhere other than America? Is the rest of the
> world leaving us behind?
3a) Windows is used elsewhere, too. 3b) Yes. Get over it, the American
century is over. And to Elizabeth: Don't believe the statistics you didn't
fake yourself.
> 4.) Whatever became of the Amiga OS? I heard that it was still hanging
> on in Germany, and that it had been upgraded from the 68K to the
> PowerPC, but that was a long time ago. Is it dead now?
Not really.
> 5.) My understanding of why Windows became important was because the
> American federal government standardized on Windows for all of its
> offices and then the commoners followed along. Is this true?
Windows became important because it came from Microsoft.
> I read
> that the Spanish government standardized on Ubuntu recently. Could
> America follow suit?
The Obama administration favors open source, as well. Wait and see.
> 8.) Whatever became of that OS kernal that Richard Stallman was
> developing that was supposed to be so much more efficient than the
> Linux kernal, but seemed to always remain vaporware?
Hurd can be used (there's even a Debian/Hurd distribution), but it's not
important. It's all a matter of how many developers can you attract, and
the less intelligent mono-kernel environment you see in Linux is attracting
more developers.
> 9.) Is the Google Chrome OS an evil scheme to take control of
> everybody's computer? I read the book, "The Internet, and how to stop
> it." This book predicted a future in which computers would be closed
> systems --- "applicances" similar to XBox --- that only run software
> that has been approved by higher-ups. The concern is that non-
> technical users will give away their right to run any software they
> want and/or to write software themselves, in exchange for the security
> of having "everything they need" handed to them on a silver platter
> (no thinking required!). Could this happen?
Well, when you buy an iPhone, it sort of happens. However, most iPhones are
jailbreaked, so it actually doesn't happen. And the general trend always
was towards openness. That's how Apple lost against the IBM PC, despite the
technical superior Mac - it wasn't open enough, and too expensive. Same
will happen with the iPhone, the open competition is just years behind.
--
Bernd Paysan
"If you want it done right, you have to do it yourself"
http://www.jwdt.com/~paysan/
Thomas Pornin
Not really. Development of Plan-9 itself stopped around 2002. Some
of the utilities have been ported to other OS, and a bunch of design
ideas disseminated in other projects.
> 2.) Will Ubuntu rule the world? I switched over from SUSE to Ubuntu at
> the advice of my ISP. Will SUSE and all of those other Linux distros
> fade away?
Ubuntu will not "rule the world". It is now the biggest Linux
distribution (in terms of user base, not sales) but it is not
overwhelming. Yet I encounter more and more frustrated Debian users who
claim that "Ubuntu is the Windows of Linux" and "Ubuntu has destroyed
what Debian was trying to do": jealousy is a sure sign of success, hence
I find it safe to claim that Ubuntu is widespread among Linux users.
Still, I find it improbable that the dozens of other Linux distributions
disappear.
> 3.) Is Windows used anywhere other than America? Is the rest of the
> world leaving us behind?
Windows is used everywhere. It is no less common in Europe than in
America. Some countries have a higher rate of illegal copying:
it is not that China uses less Windows than the USA, it is just that
Microsoft makes less money from China.
Some governments (e.g. Germany) try to standardize on Linux, usually for
supposed technological independence, or as a political gesture for
"openness", whatever this means. More rarely, for cost -- but the cost
of the operating system is really a small part of the cost of operating
computers (the salary of the computer operator alone is orders of
magnitudes above that of the computer and its software). But there is a
long jump from an announce of "we should use Linux" to an actual large
user base.
> 4.) Whatever became of the Amiga OS? I heard that it was still hanging
> on in Germany, and that it had been upgraded from the 68K to the
> PowerPC, but that was a long time ago. Is it dead now?
AmigaOS runs on the Amiga. That kind of platform is quite dead now,
although rumour has it that some hobbyist still power up some of those
machines from time to time.
> 5.) My understanding of why Windows became important was because the
> American federal government standardized on Windows for all of its
> offices and then the commoners followed along. Is this true?
No. The circumstances which made Microsoft a big actor include:
-- IBM launched the PC architecture in order to confuse the market, i.e.
mostly to avoid customers massively adopting one of the cheap systems
which were beginning to emerge. The strategy was to reorient customers
to the more mainstream (and expensive) systems, a market which IBM ruled
at that time. Thus, the PC was built cheap, and unprotected by patents:
anyone could build an interoperable PC clone. Retrospectively, this is
what ensured the supremacy of the PC architecture that we observe today.
-- IBM bought the operating system for the PC from Microsoft, because
they believed it was cheaper that way, and IBM really did not care about
the future of the platform. Microsoft believed otherwise, and managed to
sell to IBM a _non-exclusive_ license: Microsoft kept the right to
develop and publish newer versions of MS-Dos. This was a masterful
action from Microsoft.
-- Microsoft understood very early that the key to market domination was
in the data format locking, especially for office-related stuff. The
Office suite, especially Word, maintained Microsoft as the over-dominant
player during the 90's.
So basically Microsoft is where it is today because they understood very
early how the market was running. For instance, they quite carefully
avoided being entangled in the game industry in the 80's and early 90's,
where competition was high; Microsoft products began to turn towards
gaming in 1995, when the Atari ST and Amiga were dead.
> I read that the Spanish government standardized on Ubuntu recently.
> Could America follow suit?
I doubt it. The whole concept of "free software" reeks of latent
communism. Americans still have quite many demons to exorcise before
considering wide acceptance of Linux.
> 6.) Why is Free-BSD still used for web servers? Does it have any
> technical advantage over Linux? Do people mostly use Free-BSD because
> of the liberal license that allows them to turn it into a proprietary
> OS (as Apple did)?
Linux has better support for desktop hardware, especially all the little
gizmos that can be plugged and unplugged at will. These do not matter on
servers. Thus, on servers, the play is really between core systems
(kernel, basic utilities), and FreeBSD is quite a match for Linux. In
my experience, FreeBSD is better at handling low-memory situations,
and used to scale better on massive machines and heavy loads (e.g.
managing thousands of simultaneous connections).
Then there is intertia: among the various operating systems that a
server may use, the one most likely to be used is the one that the same
server or its predecessor was using the year before. Software
installations on servers are much less volatile than on desktop systems.
Linux got much better at scalability in the last years, but that is
still a recent change (i.e. it occurred in the 21st century).
As for the license: yes, the GPL is quite feared among many private
companies, whereas the BSD license is known to be "business-compatible"
(for instance, there is BSD-licensed code in Windows itself). Thus, for
a company which makes a big bet on a big software component (as Apple
did with MacOS X), using FreeBSD was surely "safer" than using Linux. I
am not claiming that these fears are _rational_; but they do exist, and
are quite strong.
> 7.) Is Open-BSD really so much more secure than either Free-BSD or
> Linux?
No. What makes an OS secure is a good sysadmin who knows what he is
doing and applies security updates. OpenBSD has a marginally higher
security _in its default installation setup_ but this is only because
the default installation setup deactivates almost all network services.
For the same functionalities, Linux, FreeBSD and OpenBSD offer by
themselves the same level of security. Which is to be expected: except
for the most basic utilities, they use the same software: Apache is
Apache, whether it runs on Linux, FreeBSD or OpenBSD.
> 8.) Whatever became of that OS kernal that Richard Stallman was
> developing that was supposed to be so much more efficient than the
> Linux kernal, but seemed to always remain vaporware?
It was called Hurd. There were a couple of Alpha versions in the 90's.
It seems that RMS and the FSF are now slowly realizing that the "free
operating system" which they wanted to build already existed and is
called Linux.
That's a bit irksome, of course: Stallman worked hard and his followers
developped almost all the parts of what consitutes a modern Linux core
(C compiler, libc, shell utilities...). At last they begin working on
the last missing block, the kernel, and voila! there comes some finnish
student named Linus Torvalds, who slaps around a few lines of code
during beery winter nights, and the whole operating system becomes known
as "Linux". It is no wonder that RMS conceived a bit of bitterness about
it. This also explains why the FSF insists on calling the OS "GNU/Linux"
which is, to be fair, a more accurate designation. A Linux system is
really the GNU system.
> 9.) Is the Google Chrome OS an evil scheme to take control of
> everybody's computer?
Google wishes to take over the world. In Google's view, being the
central part of all information flows is the main step for that (and
I quite agree). Google dabbling in Web browsers, operating systems...
these are just parts of their grand domination scheme.
Now, on the face of it, being dominated by Google looks somewhat better
than being dominated by Microsoft.
> The concern is that non-technical users will give away their right to
> run any software they want and/or to write software themselves, in
> exchange for the security of having "everything they need" handed to
> them on a silver platter (no thinking required!). Could this happen?
I certainly hope so.
--Thomas Pornin
Elizabeth D Rather
...
>
> 3a) Windows is used elsewhere, too. 3b) Yes. Get over it, the American
> century is over. And to Elizabeth: Don't believe the statistics you didn't
> fake yourself.
Microsoft-watching (and tallying market shares) is big business, with
many players. It's a high-stakes game because the companies involved
(MS, Apple, etc.) are publicly-traded stocks. If any market analyst
publishes figures that are not based on sound research and consistent
with analysis produced by competing firms, a very public firestorm will
ensue.
Rugxulo
On Nov 11, 9:51 pm, Hugh Aguilar <hugoagui...@rosycrew.com> wrote:
>
> 2.) Will Ubuntu rule the world? I switched over from SUSE to Ubuntu at
> the advice of my ISP. Will SUSE and all of those other Linux distros
> fade away?
Heavily doubt it although it's true that Ubuntu is very popular. But
then again, so are many other Linuxes. See distrowatch.com. Lots of
Debian, Slackware, and Red Hat derivatives. They all do things
differently (GNOME, KDE, RPM, DEB, SELinux, AppArmor), hence the
variations (desktop, server, repair/system, embedded). E.g. Puppy
(made from scratch) is in no way targeted at the same users as Ubuntu
(which BTW is Debian-based).
> 3.) Is Windows used anywhere other than America? Is the rest of the
> world leaving us behind?
I'm a little tired of all the advertising that MS pushes (... decision
engine?? ... was my idea??), esp. since they already have such a huge
marketshare. Also some of their products are a bit trendy, IMHO, and
not exactly the best value for the buck. Sometimes I wonder why they
even bother with creating some things (boredom? money? NIH?).
> 4.) Whatever became of the Amiga OS? I heard that it was still hanging
> on in Germany, and that it had been upgraded from the 68K to the
> PowerPC, but that was a long time ago. Is it dead now?
For all such obscure OS things, it might be easier to just read
http://www.osnews.com . Granted, it's a bit blog-y, not really an
official journalistic site or anything (big complaint by some people,
but I don't care). But it has some cool links and articles.
> 5.) My understanding of why Windows became important was because the
> American federal government standardized on Windows for all of its
> offices and then the commoners followed along. Is this true? I read
> that the Spanish government standardized on Ubuntu recently. Could
> America follow suit?
People always say Windows is only good because of backwards
compatibility. And why not? If you spent time (or money) developing
something, why should every OS upgrade break it? (Note that this isn't
fully true anymore.) I think apps are more important than OSes, and
those aren't easy to port / upgrade / maintain (and that's IF you have
someone who wants to do it).
But the other truth is that people only follow top dogs, e.g.
Microsoft stays on top of everything (games, tablets, multicore, 64-
bit, Blu-Ray, exFAT). They have the money and they use it to develop
more stuff, so people follow them (even if they have to rewrite
everything). Windows isn't as much about legacy anymore as it is about
future crud (.NET anyone??).
> 6.) Why is Free-BSD still used for web servers? Does it have any
> technical advantage over Linux? Do people mostly use Free-BSD because
> of the liberal license that allows them to turn it into a proprietary
> OS (as Apple did)?
License does play a strong role though, obviously, because it prevents
(or allows) them to do certain things (e.g. ZFS). Of course FreeBSD is
very different in design than Linux, but it does depend on your needs
whether it works better for you or not (e.g. Yahoo! servers supposedly
use FreeBSD).
> 7.) Is Open-BSD really so much more secure than either Free-BSD or
> Linux? Is it primarily secure because it restricts the programs that
> get distributed with it to only those that have been examined to make
> sure they aren't trojan horses, or is there more to Open-BSD's
> security than this?
I don't think OpenBSD is nearly as big or popular as other *BSDs,
even, but the few developers they do have seem to work hard. However,
it seems a bit more rough around the edges (to my very very naive /
limited eyes). But it's definitely still alive, so that's one big pro
right there. (Yes, they supposedly code audit more heavily, and it is
supposed to be more secure, but I can't really say anything about that
from personal experience.)
> 8.) Whatever became of that OS kernal that Richard Stallman was
> developing that was supposed to be so much more efficient than the
> Linux kernal, but seemed to always remain vaporware?
HURD used old code as a way to speed up the development process, but I
think that ended up slowing it down (ironically). As mentioned
already, Debian HURD exists but isn't fully mature (although there was
some minor update lately, I think). Don't get your hopes up about it,
esp. since Linux has such huge mindshare and company support behind
it, most people probably consider it a waste of time to duplicate
effort (although truthfully ALL OSes duplicate everything, NIH is an
epidemic!).
> 9.) Is the Google Chrome OS an evil scheme to take control of
> everybody's computer? I read the book, "The Internet, and how to stop
> it." This book predicted a future in which computers would be closed
> systems --- "applicances" similar to XBox --- that only run software
> that has been approved by higher-ups. The concern is that non-
> technical users will give away their right to run any software they
> want and/or to write software themselves, in exchange for the security
> of having "everything they need" handed to them on a silver platter
> (no thinking required!). Could this happen?
It could happen, yes, and some companies would love that, esp. for
more money, but it's a bad way of thinking. The simple truth is that
you can't sell every little app, you can't nickel and dime people to
death. Also, most people (except geeks) don't want to upgrade hardware
every three years. While I like my XBox 1 and don't mind having no
control over it, a home PC is different because it's intended (at
least by me) to be tweaked here and there. That's the majority of the
appeal (to me), that and communication (email, forums, news), not
games, not shopping, not business, not media (movies, songs), not
wasting time (YouTube). But everyone is different, so needs vary.
Andrew Haley
> Bernd Paysan wrote:
> ...
> >
> > 3a) Windows is used elsewhere, too. 3b) Yes. Get over it, the
> > American century is over. And to Elizabeth: Don't believe the
> > statistics you didn't fake yourself.
> Microsoft-watching (and tallying market shares) is big business, with
> many players. It's a high-stakes game because the companies involved
> (MS, Apple, etc.) are publicly-traded stocks. If any market analyst
> publishes figures that are not based on sound research and consistent
> with analysis produced by competing firms, a very public firestorm will
> ensue.
The < 1% figure is very controversial. [1] The market share of free
software is notoriously hard to measure. A reasonable guess is more
likely to be w3counter, which tracks access to web sites: this puts
the desktop market share of Linux at 2.14%. Of course, Linux market
share on servers is much higher.
Andrew.
Elizabeth D Rather
>> 9.) Is the Google Chrome OS an evil scheme to take control of
>> everybody's computer?
>
> Google wishes to take over the world. In Google's view, being the
> central part of all information flows is the main step for that (and
> I quite agree). Google dabbling in Web browsers, operating systems...
> these are just parts of their grand domination scheme.
For Silicon Valley's view of Google's nefarious schemes, see:
http://kara.allthingsd.com/20091112/is-google-scary-not-to-silicon-valley-even-at-a-party-for-a-book-about-how-scary-it-could-be/?reflink=ATD_myyahoo
Rugxulo
On Nov 12, 12:38 pm, Andrew Haley <andre...@littlepinkcloud.invalid>
wrote:
>
> The < 1% figure is very controversial. [1] The market share of free
> software is notoriously hard to measure. A reasonable guess is more
> likely to be w3counter, which tracks access to web sites: this puts
> the desktop market share of Linux at 2.14%. Of course, Linux market
> share on servers is much higher.
>
> [1]http://itmanagement.earthweb.com/osrc/article.php/3818696/Linux-Deskt...
Why does anyone even care what the marketshare is? If you like it, use
it. Obviously you can't count really accurately because it's a huge
world (6.5 billion!). You can't even count to a billion in one
lifetime. So yes, you have to take such numbers with a huge bucket of
salt.
I use Windows almost all the time, but I've tried many Linuxes (and
others) over the past few years. Actually, my favorite is DOS (FreeDOS
being the most active [barely!] and free), so most of my efforts rely
on DOS compatibility (which sucks under modern Windows, bah). Most
people these days probably run more than one OS, esp. under VMs, so
are they counted twice? Thrice?? Forth(rice)??? ;-)
It's like a big ego war: "Ours is bigger than yours, nyah", completely
pointless. God forbid everybody just used what worked, helped each
other, ported everything to other OSes, behaved decently, then we
could all get along! :-)
(Note that this isn't meant to be an attack on anybody in particular,
just a general response.)
Rod Pemberton
news:4afc0e40$0$537$426a...@news.free.fr...
> > everybody's computer?
Yes. Well, at least for underpowered machines that really need
client-server, er.. cloud computing, to help out their performance.
> Google wishes to take over the world. In Google's view, being the
> central part of all information flows is the main step for that (and
> I quite agree). Google dabbling in Web browsers, operating systems...
I think they realized that, for underpowered computers at least, that the
browser can replace the OS, or at least the OSes GUI. If a trillion
netbooks are eventually sold worldwide and they get just 2% of netbook
owners to pay a yearly charge of $1 access fee to Google "cloud computing"
app's: $20 Billion USD. If a $1/month, $240 Billion.
> these are just parts of their grand domination scheme.
Yes.
> > The concern is that non-technical users will give away their right to
> > run any software they want and/or to write software themselves, in
They're non-technical users. Why do they care about such a right? They
can't effect it themselves. They have to find someone else to fulfill their
rights.
> > exchange for the security of having "everything they need" handed to
> > them on a silver platter (no thinking required!). Could this happen?
>
> I certainly hope so.
>
Didn't this happen already? IBM, Amiga, MS...
Rod Pemberton
Rod Pemberton
news:5fc88093-dc20-442f...@o10g2000yqa.googlegroups.com...
> 6.) [...]
> Do people mostly use Free-BSD because
> of the liberal license that allows them to turn it into a proprietary
> OS (as Apple did)?
Those that I've known who've used some form of BSD did so on the grounds of
perceived technical merit: i.e., developed, produced, or maintained by
Computer Science (CS) students at University of California, Berkeley.
> 8.) Whatever became of that OS kernal that Richard Stallman was
> developing that was supposed to be so much more efficient than the
> Linux kernal, but seemed to always remain vaporware?
However unfortunate for Stallman (i.e., Torvalds stole his thunder), the GNU
community embraced Linux. Without the support of GNU community, what need
is there for another OS kernel that uses the GNU toolchain? The GNU
community had the opportunity to embrace various BSDs as their kernel prior
to Linux, but didn't. About the only place that could use another kernel -
allowing *complete* use of the GNU toolchain - is DOS. But, DOS has DJGPP.
Except for GLIBC (DJGPP uses a custom C library), DJGPP implements the GNU
toolchain for DOS.
Of course, with other licenses far more open than GPL, e.g., BSD, MIT, stuff
listed by OSI, I think people are slowly coming to the awareness that GPL is
not just about open software. It's also a personal crusade to kill off
commercial software. Who cares if BSD code is used in Windows, if you can
also use it in BSD, or in your own personal OS? Who cares if some of the
code becomes closed sourced? (Only GPL...) A programmer gets paid to work
on BSD code at work and then that same programmer gets to use it for free at
home. He's unemployed and hungry if he wants to *only* work on GPL'd
code...
> 9.) Is the Google Chrome OS an evil scheme to take control of
> everybody's computer?
Yes. Or, it's at least an attempt to replace the GUI and/or OS with their
browser and client-server/cloud-computing model. This can work for
netbooks. (I've made more comments to this in reply to Mr. Pornin.)
Rod Pemberton
Hugh Aguilar
> > I read that the Spanish government standardized on Ubuntu recently.
> > Could America follow suit?
>
> I doubt it. The whole concept of "free software" reeks of latent
> communism. Americans still have quite many demons to exorcise before
> considering wide acceptance of Linux.
I've always been amazed at the popularity of FSF/GPL here in America
considering that it "reeks of latent communism." I think that the
problem with capitalism is the tendency for people to believe in
optimization. They may not know much about the OS field, but they know
that they want the *best* OS (hey, we're Americans; we won't settle
for second-best). The result is that everybody converges on a single
*best* OS --- a local maxima --- and this is how Bill Gates became the
King of Mediocrity. This is also the mindset of corporatism (fascism),
in which the government supports important corporations and strives to
squelch unfair competition from upstarts. To a large extent, communism
is a backlash against this kind of thinking. Linux became popular
primarily because people just wanted an OS that didn't suck, even if
it meant working for free (as in no money).
Weirdly enough, the American people are now more communistic than the
Chinese. In China, corporatism is big now. Strategic industries get
massive government subsidies, and there is an effort by the government
to squelch small companies. The reason is that the big corporations
are manufacturing products for export (mostly to America), and the
small companies are providing goods and services for Chinese citizens.
The government wants people to put their money in savings accounts
rather than spend it on goods and services, so they squelch the small
companies. By comparison, here in America there is a backlash against
corporatism, and an emphasis on service industries. Computer
programming has now become a service industry.
I can foresee a future in which computers are sold as appliances at
WalMart (all made in China), and they are closed systems. The
consumers get the *best* software (Windows OS) pre-installed, and they
can't install software of their own. The browsers that come built-in
to these appliance computers will block websites (http://forum.
911movement.org/) that might disturb the citizens, and these browsers
will automatically update their black-lists over the internet without
asking the computer user for permission to do this.
Meanwhile, more technically inclined people will be building their own
computers and running Linux on them. To a large extent, this will be
done for the purpose of gaining free access to the internet, including
the use of encryption. This may eventually become illegal --- there
will be a "War on Linux" similar to our "War on Drugs." George W. Bush
was pushing for the privatization of Social Security. He intended that
people would be given a short list of corporations that they would be
allowed to invest their money in. We can bet that Microsoft will be on
that list, but Red Hat won't. If a significant portion of the American
population have their life savings invested in Microsoft, it would
make sense for the government to make Linux illegal because Microsoft
is "too big to fail." Linux use will be seen as being unpatriotic ---
essentially trying to pull the rug out from under Social Security. A
lot of programmers will stick with Linux however, because Windows will
be focused on providing shrink-wrapped software, and there just won't
be much work available writing Windows software outside of the
corporate environment. All of the vertical-market software will be
written under Linux.
> > 9.) Is the Google Chrome OS an evil scheme to take control of
> > everybody's computer?
>
> Google wishes to take over the world. In Google's view, being the
> central part of all information flows is the main step for that (and
> I quite agree). Google dabbling in Web browsers, operating systems...
> these are just parts of their grand domination scheme.
Google is in bed with Beijing. Google and Yahoo have both cooperated
with China in regard to blocking internet access, and also providing
the Chinese government with information on what websites their
citizens are accessing. We can expect the same kind of Big Brother
treatment here in America. Beijing has a lot of dollars, and they can
be the bully that tells American corporations what to do.
Thomas Pornin
> If a trillion netbooks are eventually sold worldwide and they get just
> 2% of netbook owners to pay a yearly charge of $1 access fee to Google
> "cloud computing" app's: $20 Billion USD. If a $1/month, $240
> Billion.
Even with an american "trillion" (i.e. 10^12), that is still a bit more
than 150 netbooks per human being on this planet -- and this includes
the hundreds of millions of people who do not have access to fresh
water, let alone electricity.
On the other hand, 2% of netbook _owners_ cannot be more than 2% of the
world population, which is below 7 billions right now (hence no more
than 140 millions of USD). Unless you plan to sell netbook to animals as
well, but I must confess that I do not quite see what my cat would do
with a netbook apart from sitting on it.
--Thomas Pornin
Sp...@controlq.com
> On 12 Nov, 03:51, Hugh Aguilar <hugoagui...@rosycrew.com> wrote:
>>
>> 7.) Is Open-BSD really so much more secure than either Free-BSD or
>> Linux? Is it primarily secure because it restricts the programs that
>> get distributed with it to only those that have been examined to make
>> sure they aren't trojan horses, or is there more to Open-BSD's
>> security than this?
>
> I don't know about Open-BSD but if you read a bit comp.os.vms you'll
> see that the people there consider OpenVMS to be much more secure
> than any Unix related operating system.
OpenBSD went through an audit process to ensure that certain classes of
exploit, including (but not limited to) buffer overruns which lead to
acess to arbitrary permissions (sic rootKits) to unauthorized programs.
OpenBSD does not extend this to its packages and ports, but the core OS is
pretty secure ...
HTH,
Rob Sciuk
gavino
openBSD is quite ahead in security but for example wil not currently
see more tahn 4g ram without recompiling the kernel and even then some
old me in that IRC channel that is was not solid. It is high quality
and can have a box act like a router/firewall execelently.
freeBSD in thier own benchmarks beat linux, but they say they
sometimes are one upped when linux makes spurts of improvement.
I feel that archlinux won the linux wars long ago.
I find opensoalris netbsd freebsd and openbsd the most interesting
along with archlinux. PLan9 from bell labs seems awesome but the
interface kicked my butt.
Windows won because it was easy to use. A computing win by gates that
seems a lost lesson. I use iceWM desktop with firefox and smplayer
for vids on netbsd currently.
If someone were able to come up with a forth box that ran a web
broswer liek firefox, played vids with stuff liek smplayer, and had
easy to setup networking and dev environment for few 100 buks i think
tons of people would buy it.
Rod Pemberton
news:3fb8ed60-281d-4149...@u25g2000prh.googlegroups.com...
> Windows won because it was easy to use.
>
Many of those other early platforms had GUI's: Mac's, Amiga's, etc. Windows
won because the IBM PC was the only personal computer platform still being
manufactured. It was hardly used outside corporate environments until the
other platforms died off. It wasn't until a decade *after* the Amiga died
off that the IBM PC had a graphics card made for it of comparable quality.
It wasn't until *after* the other early platforms died off that MS was able
to sell Windows successfully: Windows 95. Windows, first released in 1983,
was an abysmal failure prior to Win95.
Rod Pemberton
Rod Pemberton
> I've always been amazed at the popularity of FSF/GPL here in America
> considering that it "reeks of latent communism."
Well, more likely socialism. It's definately non-capitalistic and
cooperative... But, non-capitalistic and cooperative could fall under
philanthropic values.
> Linux became popular
> primarily because people just wanted an OS that didn't suck
Are you joking?
In 1991, Linux couldn't do squat. In 1998 when all the CD's distro's came
out, it was a still a nightmare. DOS was far more powerful. In the early
2000's, lots of stuff still didn't work and some stuff still doesn't. I've
probably got ten pieces of hardware from the mid '90's to present day that
still won't work with Linux. All of it worked with DOS and Windows.
> Strategic industries [in China] get
> massive government subsidies,
That's not capitalism... even when done in the US.
> ... there is an effort by the government
> to squelch small companies.
That's *definately* not capitalism.
> The reason is that the big corporations
> are manufacturing products for export (mostly to America), and the
> small companies are providing goods and services for Chinese citizens.
They're shooting themselves in the foot, just as we did by exporting our
jobs to them in the first place. Is it Americans' fault that they elected
politicians who flunked Econ 101 and incorrectly thought Adam Smith said to
export everyone's jobs?
> The government wants people to put their money in savings accounts
> rather than spend it on goods and services,
No money circulation, no economy... Their economy has been growing rapidly,
so this probably has a calming effect.
> I can foresee a future in which computers are sold as appliances at
> WalMart (all made in China), and they are closed systems.
Computers are already a commodity.
> The
> consumers get the *best* software (Windows OS) pre-installed, and they
> can't install software of their own.
FTC etc. violation...
> The browsers that come built-in
> to these appliance computers will block websites
> that might disturb the citizens,
Why? Let me explain that. Why attempt to control something under an
individual's control, when you can easily control something under a
corporations control, e.g., an ISP, for thousands or millions of users at a
time, peacefully through law or court order?
> (http://forum.911movement.org/)
I'll guess you really just wanted to post that link... The post is not bad
so far. Although your statements have been pointed, I didn't realize you
were fishing until now. I hope you like my responses. They're legit.
> ... these browsers
> will automatically update their black-lists over the internet without
> asking the computer user for permission to do this.
You're behind the times. The UK and AU (Australia, not African Union...) do
this already, but at the ISP level.
> Meanwhile, more technically inclined people will be building their own
> computers and running Linux on them.
I've built my own for years, either for low cost or to customize, but I fail
to see what that has to do with Linux. Linux has never supported all of my
hardware. I just installed the 64-bit version of VectorLinux (std 6.0
a0.9). Guess what didn't support all of my hardware? It doesn't properly
support booting from an external USB harddrive. I'm having to use loadlin
via DOS to get it started.
> To a large extent, this will be
> done for the purpose of gaining free access to the internet,
Huh? One must pay for a network connection no matter what type it is. If
not by money, then by irritations imposed by the "free" service.
> [Yeah, I think his dope took effect there...]
May you read that snipped part sober one day.
> We can expect the same kind of Big Brother
> treatment here in America.
We've got guns and lots of them. It's not like in the "gunless" and
"videoed" UK or Australia. Two armed government agents: "Knock! Knock! Get
in the van... (disappear)". There are literally 2600 or so US citizens -
and three guns for each of them - for every individual who represents a
government authority. Our government cannot spark up a mass revolt and
still expect to control the population.
Rod Pemberton
Rod Pemberton
> According to Rod Pemberton <do_no...@nohavenot.cmm>:
> > If a trillion netbooks are eventually sold worldwide and they get just
> > 2% of netbook owners to pay a yearly charge of $1 access fee to Google
> > "cloud computing" app's: $20 Billion USD. If a $1/month, $240
> > Billion.
>
> Even with an american "trillion" (i.e. 10^12), that is still a bit more
> than 150 netbooks per human being on this planet -- and this includes
> the hundreds of millions of people who do not have access to fresh
> water, let alone electricity.
>
So?
> On the other hand, 2% of netbook _owners_ cannot be more than 2% of the
> world population
I think your math is flawed. I don't see that as true at all.
There's at least 14 computers in this household... Many people upgrade
every year and half. I used to. Over a decade that's 7 per person with an
average four per household or a total of 28. So, you need 35 Billion ave.
individuals, but individuals aren't the only buyers of PC's. It seems you
forgot about the hundreds in public, school, and university libraries, the
dozens of computerized classrooms in such environments, corporations with
computers for employees, training rooms, and network servers? That, in my
estimate, doubles the number of computers or cuts the number of buyers in
half 17.5 Billion (56 comps/per). But, did you forget that computers are
sold over long periods of time, e.g., a decade and bought frequently? That
reduces the effective number to 1.75 Billion buyers per year. China at 100%
penetration with one per citizen could handle that by themselves. So, that
means only 23% of the current world population (assuming *zero* population
growth) needs to buy a netbook every year over the next decade for a
trillion netbooks to exist. Add in population growth, i.e., up 620% over a
decade at 1.2% rate - averaging 27.5 Billion - reaching 47.1 Billion peak by
2019 - and that reduces it to 6.4% of the world population on average need
to buy a netbook per year for a decade for a trillion netbooks to exist. If
there is zero duplication of netbook buyers, i.e. netbook _owners_, over the
ten year period, that's only 64% of the average population. If the cost of
a netbook today is $200 USD, it'll be $40 USD within a couple of years, $10
USD within 7 or so, and maybe less if they switch from x86 to ARM. That'll
be well within reach of poor countries even without philanthropic donations.
Of course, you still should've understood "netbook owners" to mean "netbooks
owned by owners of netbooks" in the given context of selling a trillion of
them, and not "owners of netbook(s) who may own multiple netbooks", not that
it really matters.
Rod Pemberton
Andrew Haley
> On Nov 12, 12:38?pm, Andrew Haley <andre...@littlepinkcloud.invalid>
> wrote:
> >
> > The < 1% figure is very controversial. [1] The market share of free
> > software is notoriously hard to measure. A reasonable guess is more
> > likely to be w3counter, which tracks access to web sites: this puts
> > the desktop market share of Linux at 2.14%. Of course, Linux market
> > share on servers is much higher.
> >
> Why does anyone even care what the marketshare is?
Why does anybody care about anything?
a. The market share gives those who care about free software some
idea how well they're doing.
b. It's interesting.
Comment is free, but facts are sacred.
Andrew.
Bernd Paysan
> Microsoft-watching (and tallying market shares) is big business, with
> many players. It's a high-stakes game because the companies involved
> (MS, Apple, etc.) are publicly-traded stocks. If any market analyst
> publishes figures that are not based on sound research and consistent
> with analysis produced by competing firms, a very public firestorm will
> ensue.
Analysts... The same analysts who said Lehman brothers were rock solid the
day before they filed for chapter 11... Well, one point is true: MS and
Apple are important publicly-traded stocks. But Canonical isn't, and even
RedHat and Novell aren't important - they don't show up in the 501k plan
portfolios, they don't matter. Until Google gets in with their Chrome OS,
analysts don't really have to mention Linux, and estimate it correctly -
rather the contrary, keeping the numbers of Linux low helps the big players
on the list, and ensures money flow back from them to the analysts. Also,
Linux is not about market share, most deployed Linux distributions (outside
of corporations) aren't sold, they are downloaded. The only relevant part
where Linux is actually sold is the netbook market (there, you can bean-
count netbooks with preinstalled Linux vs. netbooks with preinstalled
Windows). But since "Linux" is not a company, analysts aren't interested in
correct numbers - nobody is bribing them that way.
According to a study b[r]ought to you by Microsoft, ~95% of all netbooks now
ship with Windows. In the alternative universe where Microsoft doesn't pay
for the analysis^WFUD, it's "just" 2/3, the rest is Linux. And that even
despite the fact that most netbook makers don't really get it, and ship with
some ridiculous Linpus Linux instead of something more usable like Ubuntu
with Netbook remix or so. This is just the learning curve, I'm quite sure
they'll get it sooner or later - especially for the lower end of (future)
ARM-based netbooks, Windows is just not an option, and having a well
polished Linux will be an important selling point.
Josh Grams
> With other licenses far more open than GPL, e.g., BSD, MIT, stuff
> listed by OSI, I think people are slowly coming to the awareness that
> GPL is not just about open software. It's also a personal crusade to
> kill off commercial software. Who cares if BSD code is used in
> Windows, if you can also use it in BSD, or in your own personal OS?
> Who cares if some of the code becomes closed sourced? (Only GPL...)
> A programmer gets paid to work on BSD code at work and then that same
> programmer gets to use it for free at home. He's unemployed and
> hungry if he wants to *only* work on GPL'd code...
Well, some of us have practical reasons for disliking commercial
software. I find that I want to modify a substantial fraction of the
applications that I use, and when I was using Windows or MacOS, the
inability to do so was always irritating. And this goes double for
embedded sort of stuff: I can't tell you how many times I've wished I
could fix some of the ridiculously stupid admin interfaces provided by
the home routers that I've had to use...and given the lack of
documentation for most devices, even if I can't change it, the source
could come in handy figuring out how to use them or looking for ways to
work around their quirks.
If more software was like the commercial Forth systems (I have the
impression they come with full source), I wouldn't have a problem with
it, but I don't really see that happening for software in general.
And of course I realize that there are very few people for which this
position makes any sense, and I'm not going to tell you how to license
your software. I'm comfortable working for pay on software under any
sort of license. And I wouldn't have a problem with contributing
patches to an existing BSD-licensed project. But if it's *my* project,
it's going to be released under the GPL, because I personally have no
interest in supporting commercial software. I can't imagine any of my
hobby projects will ever be commercially useful, so it's an empty
gesture. But it is something I feel strongly about.
--Josh
Brad
in some areas. The systems we build keep getting more complex and the
time to market keeps getting shorter. That means you can't fully
document them and all of their funny dependencies, and if you could
the document would be so big you wouldn't have time to read it. So,
you spend a lot of time exploring. Interactivity helps a lot. Also,
since Forth is very productive (depending on who is using it) you tend
to be able to maintain a bigger view of the project in your head
before it starts to fade so it's easier to avoid hacks that make the
code unmaintainable.
-Brad
Dennis
"If Go has any real benefits other than being a Google-branded
creation and being open source (under the BSD license, no less), it's
far from obvious right now."
DaR
Bernd Paysan
> But if it's *my* project,
> it's going to be released under the GPL, because I personally have no
> interest in supporting commercial software.
Well, I'd put it differently: I personally have no interest in supporting
commercial software *free of charge*. That's where the GPL is quite handy:
commercial software often needs a GPL exception - and that can be sold by
the original authors. Pay for it, or accept the "viral" nature.
Josh Grams
> Josh Grams wrote:
>> But if it's *my* project,
>> it's going to be released under the GPL, because I personally have no
>> interest in supporting commercial software.
>
> Well, I'd put it differently: I personally have no interest in supporting
> commercial software *free of charge*. That's where the GPL is quite handy:
> commercial software often needs a GPL exception - and that can be sold by
> the original authors. Pay for it, or accept the "viral" nature.
Yeah, that's much clearer.
--Josh
Helmar
Hi Bernd,
> Josh Grams wrote:
> > But if it's *my* project,
> > it's going to be released under the GPL, because I personally have no
> > interest in supporting commercial software.
>
> Well, I'd put it differently: I personally have no interest in supporting
> commercial software *free of charge*. That's where the GPL is quite handy:
> commercial software often needs a GPL exception - and that can be sold by
> the original authors. Pay for it, or accept the "viral" nature.
You are right as far - but well, why not using BSD-like license then?
This is also not free as in "free beer", nobody can force you to
support anything without payment and something that's released free
remains free for everyone who received it. No need for something
"viral" and it is completely conforming to local copyright laws that
do not fit say Public Domain. I do think that GPL is a good choice if
you want to have the term "freedom" as in RMSs mind. In general it
makes it impossible for you simple small developer to make money with.
It has been shown that huger companies can do. In contrary a complete
BSD-like style licensed program can 1) give you partners that help to
develop without "virality" 2) you can sell everything plus
customizations without having your helpers to sign agreements. If you
want the maximum impact of your sources in terms of everybody uses it,
GPL is probably not the best choice.
Regards,
-Helmar
PS: "Go" or "Issue9" is a not that uninteresting language... It seems
to be designed by the principle "less is more" and in that it has at
least a small common part with Forth.
Andrew Haley
> On Nov 13, 10:50?am, Bernd Paysan <bernd.pay...@gmx.de> wrote:
> Hi Bernd,
> > Josh Grams wrote:
> > > But if it's *my* project,
> > > it's going to be released under the GPL, because I personally have no
> > > interest in supporting commercial software.
> >
> > Well, I'd put it differently: I personally have no interest in
> > supporting commercial software *free of charge*. ?That's where the
> > GPL is quite handy: commercial software often needs a GPL
> > exception - and that can be sold by the original authors. ?Pay for
> > it, or accept the "viral" nature.
> You are right as far - but well, why not using BSD-like license
> then? This is also not free as in "free beer", nobody can force you
> to support anything without payment and something that's released
> free remains free for everyone who received it. No need for
> something "viral" and it is completely conforming to local copyright
> laws that do not fit say Public Domain. I do think that GPL is a
> good choice if you want to have the term "freedom" as in RMSs
> mind. In general it makes it impossible for you simple small
> developer to make money with. It has been shown that huger
> companies can do. In contrary a complete BSD-like style licensed
> program can 1) give you partners that help to develop without
> "virality"
> 2) you can sell everything plus customizations without having your
> helpers to sign agreements.
That's true of GPL'd code too.
> If you want the maximum impact of your sources in terms of everybody
> uses it, GPL is probably not the best choice.
Well, it depend on what you want to achieve. If you want to make sure
that every user of your code has the right to study it, change it, and
use it in whatever way they want, then GPL is the way to go. If you
are prepared to accept that some third party may modify your code and
then release it in a way that restricts a user's rights, then BSD is
fine.
Andrew.
Hugh Aguilar
> > (http://forum.911movement.org/)
>
> I'll guess you really just wanted to post that link... The post is not bad
> so far. Although your statements have been pointed, I didn't realize you
> were fishing until now. I hope you like my responses. They're legit.
I wasn't "fishing." If you had actually followed that link, you would
have gotten a message that says: "The computers that run forum.
911movement.org are having some trouble. Usually this is just a
temporary problem, so you might want to try again in a few minutes."
That forum is dead, and it wasn't lack of interest that killed it, as
it was very active (a lot more active than c.l.f.). It seems to have
been censored --- one day it was there, and the next day it had gone
down the memory hole.
> > ... these browsers
> > will automatically update their black-lists over the internet without
> > asking the computer user for permission to do this.
>
> You're behind the times. The UK and AU (Australia, not African Union...) do
> this already, but at the ISP level.
I agree that the ISPs are more vulnerable than the individuals. My ISP
told me about a new trend, that websites don't try to make their
visitors pay for access, but rather make the ISPs pay for access. An
example is ESPN. The idea is that the individuals who want access to
those websites will drop their ISP if he doesn't support access, and
will spend their money at another ISP that does. The mechanism can
work in reverse too. The ISPs can be pressured to block access to
websites on a black-list, and can be fined if they fail to comply.
Censorship can be done at the ISP level most easily. If everybody is
using a closed-source browser however, then it can also be done at the
browser level. It will most likely be done at both levels. It is
unlikely that the ISPs can actually be hit with criminal charges, as
we do still have the First Amendment, but they can be pressured in
other ways. There may be some ISPs who refuse to cow-tow. My own ISP
(www.axint.net) is owned by the world's only British libertarian
(Simon Powell), who is unlikely to cooperate with the censors no
matter how much pressure is exerted against him. Because of hard nuts
such as this, the censors will likely also try to control the
browsers, so that they can cover all the bases.
> > To a large extent, this will be
> > done for the purpose of gaining free access to the internet,
>
> Huh? One must pay for a network connection no matter what type it is. If
> not by money, then by irritations imposed by the "free" service.
I didn't mean *free* in the sense of "no money." I meant *free* in the
sense of "free speech." An open-source browser can't prevent you from
accessing black-listed websites because you can recompile your browser
with all of that socialistic garbage excised from the source-code. If
you are using Linux, then nobody can force you to run software if you
don't like what the software is doing (or you don't know what the
software is doing) --- you can always recompile your software to do
only what you want it to do and nothing more. I think that I have a
right to run whatever software I want on my computer. I'm not leasing
my computer from the government --- it is my private property --- I
alone will decide what software runs on it.
The argument against this is that the government has a right to
control (or at least monitor) what I do on my computer, in the event
that I might do something illegal. The classic example here is child
pornography. I think this is just scare-mongering however. I seriously
doubt that child-pornography even exists. I think it is just an urban-
legend that was invented to frighten people into giving up their
Fourth Amendment rights. I also think that the 9-11-01 attack was an
inside job that was perpetrated in order to frighten people into
accepting the Patriot Act, and also to go to war against Afghanistan.
All in all, I am not very impressed by big scary monsters, such as
child-molesting perverts and airplane-hijacking Moslems. I think this
stuff is fake.
> > [Yeah, I think his dope took effect there...]
>
> May you read that snipped part sober one day.
Are you suggesting that I'm on drugs? What are talking about?
> > We can expect the same kind of Big Brother
> > treatment here in America.
>
> We've got guns and lots of them. It's not like in the "gunless" and
> "videoed" UK or Australia. Two armed government agents: "Knock! Knock! Get
> in the van... (disappear)". There are literally 2600 or so US citizens -
> and three guns for each of them - for every individual who represents a
> government authority. Our government cannot spark up a mass revolt and
> still expect to control the population.
There is a lot of effort to confiscate guns here in America. I was
arrested and jailed for carrying a concealed weapon without a permit,
and my vehicle, my laptop and my gun were confiscated. I eventually
defeated the socialists though. I got all my property back and all of
the charges against me dropped. You can read the arrest report on my
website:
www.rosycrew.org/Lakewood.pdf
Note that you are the one who brought up the subject of guns, so I'm
not "fishing" when I provide a related link.
Hugh Aguilar
wrote:
> > Why does anyone even care what the marketshare is?
>
> Why does anybody care about anything?
>
> a. The market share gives those who care about free software some
> idea how well they're doing.
>
> b. It's interesting.
>
> Comment is free, but facts are sacred.
meaningless because there aren't any widgets to count. I run Ubuntu on
my computer but I didn't buy it because it is free, so my use of
Ubuntu doesn't count toward Linux's market share. Your comment "facts
are sacred" did get a laugh out of me though, so that's got to count
for something.
Hugh Aguilar
> The ISPs can be pressured to block access to
> websites on a black-list, and can be fined if they fail to comply.
On second thought, the ISPs won't likely be fined. Instead, they will
get hit with lawsuits. The government will *suggest* that ISPs block
access to websites on a black-list. Some ISP will refuse to do this. A
citizen will then access a child-pornography website that is on the
list, and that citizen will sue the ISP for allowing this to happen.
The citizen will want monetary compensation for the "emotional trauma"
of viewing perverse and disgusting photographs. They will point out
that, if only the ISP had followed the government guidelines, the
problem would never have occurred. This will be similar to how
lawsuits were used against the tobacco industry for allowing citizens
to kill themselves by smoking cigarettes excessively. Also, we have an
effort in America now to allow citizens to sue the gun manufacturers
and/or the gun stores for allowing their family members to get shot by
criminals committing murders with guns. Of course, all of these
lawsuits represent an abandonment of common sense, but that is America
today.
Jerry Avins
> On Nov 13, 7:09 pm, Hugh Aguilar <hugoagui...@rosycrew.com> wrote:
>> The ISPs can be pressured to block access to
>> websites on a black-list, and can be fined if they fail to comply.
>
> On second thought, the ISPs won't likely be fined. Instead, they will
> get hit with lawsuits. The government will *suggest* that ISPs block
> access to websites on a black-list. Some ISP will refuse to do this. A
> citizen will then access a child-pornography website that is on the
> list, and that citizen will sue the ISP for allowing this to happen.
You just wrote, "I seriously doubt that child-pornography even exists."
You're like all the other far-right fear mongers, except with too short
a memory. A liar needs a better memory than you apparently have.
...
Jerry
--
Engineering is the art of making what you want from things you can get.
�����������������������������������������������������������������������
Hugh Aguilar
> You just wrote, "I seriously doubt that child-pornography even exists."
> You're like all the other far-right fear mongers, except with too short
> a memory. A liar needs a better memory than you apparently have.
That is a remarkably strong-worded post. You really need to mellow
out.
I'm not a liar. When I described the scenario of somebody accessing
child-pornography at a website that was on the black-list, I assumed
the website was a plant put there by the government for the purpose of
substantiating the lawsuit. When I said that child-pornography doesn't
exist, I meant that nobody actually produces that stuff for their
enjoyment. Of course, my concern that the government would plant
evidence might just be far-right fear mongering. LOL
MarkWills
>
> I'm not a liar. When I described the scenario of somebody accessing
> child-pornography at a website that was on the black-list, I assumed
> the website was a plant put there by the government for the purpose of
> substantiating the lawsuit. When I said that child-pornography doesn't
> exist, I meant that nobody actually produces that stuff for their
> enjoyment. Of course, my concern that the government would plant
> evidence might just be far-right fear mongering. LOL
Do you have children of your own?
>When I described the scenario of somebody accessing
> child-pornography at a website that was on the black-list, I assumed
> the website was a plant put there by the government for the purpose of
> substantiating the lawsuit.
You are mis-informed. Child pornography sites are not blacklisted. And
the reason is because they normally hide on perfectly legitimate,
hacked (or infiltrated by people on the inside) websites.
> When I said that child-pornography doesn't
> exist, I meant that nobody actually produces that stuff for their
> enjoyment.
No you didn't. If that was what you meant, then you would have said
it, wouldn't you?
What are you even *talking* about? If they don't produce it for their
enjoyment, what do they produce it for? Do you mean that they produce
it for *other* people's enjoyment? Ok. Fair enough. Ergo, child porn
exists. Ergo child porn is real. QED.
Child pornography exists. It is real. May I suggest that you actually
try leaving the shores of the United States, and travel a little? You
know, see the world. There's a lot out there you know. Let me give you
a few pointers:
1) Dhaka, Bangladesh. Children offering themselves on the streets
(their pimps hide in shops nearby)
2) Thailand. Anything goes basically. Women, men, lady-boys or
children. Whatever you want. There is a 'fixer' in every bar, pub,
club, and cafe. You'll see 50 year old western men walking down the
street with 12 year old Thai girls (or boys), like it's completely
normal. Of course, these men are probably fathers themselves back
home...
3) Vietnam. As above.
Go have a look at these places. Then come back here and tell us that
it doesn't exist.
Finally, have a look at this link:
oxcheps.new.ox.ac.uk/casebook/Resources/RVFELL_1%20DOC.pdf
I used to work every day with one of the people charged in that
document. I won't name him on this forum, go read the document.
Furthermore, leopards don't change their spots. He was (apparently)
recently re-arrested at his place of work, his office computers
seized, and taken away. Never to be seen again.
Child porn is real.
It's a sad sick world. And people like you, who say that it doesn't
exist only make the problem worse.
I suppose the holocaust was a conspiracy too, huh?
Re 9/11 - May I suggest a look on the archives here:
The timeline (oh lucy you gotta a lotta 'splainin to do) is
particularly interesting. If it's true of course.
Wayne
>
> I thought you may like this:
>
> Clearly the computing world is vanishing into what one recent writer
> called "cloud cuckoo land" where big brother (aka HAL2010) decides
> what programs you can and can't run depending mostly on the weather
> and of course whether or not your broadband happens to be up or down
> that day.... anyway...
> ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Google now announces a new programming language (which explicitly
> targets C++ users) it calls "Go"
>
> Whilst I applaud anything that points out how bad C++ really is I
> just havn't been able to stop laughing since I read about "GO".
[snip]
> Fortunately they do point out on their tutorial page that
> "...[all the] example programs work."
>
> How useful. Examples that work. What will they think of next?
Maybe they are just pointing out that it is not as bad as normal C++ code
;) .
>
> PS.
>
> Thank you all for your comments regarding Forth and OS writing - sorry
> to be tardy in my appreciation but I had a few problems.
>
> Some very useful and interesting comments came out.
That's OK.
--
Using Opera's revolutionary e-mail client: http://www.opera.com/mail/
ken...@cix.compulink.co.uk
Pemberton) wrote:
> Windows, first released in 1983,
> was an abysmal failure prior to Win95.
Windows was a failure until 3.0 or 3.1 it took of big time with those.
I have used GEM, OS2 (2.2 and 3.0) and linux as well as Windows. GEM did
not have true multi-tasking though if you set up the accessory menu
properly you could get round that. OS2 3.0 (Warp) was as far as I can
recall more stable than 3.1 but slower on the same kit and Linux took
forever to set up. To get X-Windows to work then required manually
setting up configuration files.
Still OS2 and GEM had a better user interface than 3.1 I installed
Dashboard on my Windows machine. Replacement shells to do away with
program manager were a biggish market with about half a dozen firms
including HP producing them. 95 had the first usable interface.
The failure of Microsoft to include features in early OS releases
actually created market opportunities. There were various DOS expanders
to allow programs to use all memory and of course memory managers like
IIRC QUEM which actually still were worth using with DOS 5 and 6 as they
gave better results than the built in ones. There were also replacement
command processors like 4DOS with a command history and enhanced batch
language.
All the above is from personal experience with home computing starting
with a Video Genie around 1980.
Ken Young
Bernd Paysan
> 3) Vietnam. As above.
Sorry, I was there, it's wrong. Of course they have prostitution there
(despite it's illegal), and the girls look young, but so do all the
other girls, there, too. Slim and small, round-faced, look like 12
until they are 35 - at least I soon can adjust my sense of age, and
guess them within a few years - and after coming back it also takes some
time to get rid of the feeling to be surrounded by old, fat people only
(partly it's true, we are an aging society, they are still a young,
growing society).
And I think: It's not about "existence"; for sure, with 6 billion people
around the world, there have to be a few idiots who actually produce
child porn (mostly sadistic criminals like Mark Dutroux, who believe the
story of the billion dollar market in child porn, and want to get rich
quickly). Reality is that child porn on the Internet is rare and well
hidden; if found, a simple notice to the provider gets rid of it
quickly. Because it greats lots of emotions, it is an ideal vehicle for
pro-censorship people - you can't tell people that you are really about
pirated music ;-). And don't call them "socialist", they are more a
flavor of fashism, i.e. paid by the big companies to drive towards
totalitarism.
Rod Pemberton
On Nov 13, 2:23 am, "Rod Pemberton" <do_not_h...@nohavenot.cmm> wrote:
>
> > I'll guess you really just wanted to post that link... The post is not
bad
> > so far. Although your statements have been pointed, I didn't realize you
> > were fishing until now. I hope you like my responses. They're legit.
>
> have gotten a message that says:
What I got was a 911 conspiracy website, or so I thought. Today, nothing
comes up. Yahoo's cache shows there was a _forum_ there for the conspiracy
website.
> An open-source browser can't prevent you from
> accessing black-listed websites because you can recompile your browser
> with all of that socialistic garbage excised from the source-code.
You can remove "all of that socialistic garbage excised from the
source-code" from closed source software too. It's not as easy. But, it's
lawful to do so, if you can find it. You have the legal right in the US
under a Supreme Court ruling to modify *any* software on your computer, even
if you've agreed to licensing terms that prevent you from doing so. The
license terms are unenforceable for personal use. Now, if you modify it and
release it, you've violated copyrights. But, you can release patches, you
created them and they are separate, but this can be problematic due to
different versions of the same file. A few projects work by providing
patches separately, with different patches for different versions of the
file.
> If
> you are using Linux, then nobody can force you to run software if you
> don't like what the software is doing (or you don't know what the
> software is doing) --- you can always recompile your software to do
> only what you want it to do and nothing more.
That's a bit of a simplification of the issue. The code size of Linux is
*huge* also. Very few have read, let alone understand, everything in Linux
and GNU codebase. There may be stuff in there you're unaware of. There may
be stuff you're aware of and don't like and would like to remove, but can't
because doing so causes the OS to crash. I.e., it's too deeply ingrained
into the design of the OS. And, there could be access of the network to get
stuff you don't want running. The wrong privileges may be enabled or
disabled by default. Etc.
> I think that I have a
> right to run whatever software I want on my computer.
Could you explain what software exists where you don't have a right to run
it on your own computer...? You might not have a legal right to posses the
software you posses, but possessing it and executing it are two different
things. And, storing it and possessing it are also two different things.
I.e., you could be storing it and not possessing it. Lawyers can make even
more legal distinctions.
> I'm not leasing
> my computer from the government --- it is my private property
You bought it. You own it. Well, the hardware that is, not the software.
The law usually makes a different interpretation of ownership of the
software that was purchased. Although you purchased it, you don't own it -
which is a concept most don't like or grasp. Since most purchases are for
stuff one owns, most can't or don't understand that the two can be separated
in the "eyes" of the law. But, legally joining the two as most people
understand them to be already, would upset the entire (US, UK) legal concept
of ownership rights, and a new method of enforcing non-proliferation of
"pirated" software would need to be developed. I.e., the legal system isn't
going to change anytime soon.
> I alone will decide what software runs on it.
Well, if you don't allow anyone else to use or access it, directly or
indirectly (unknown to you, e.g., via a network enabled application...),
then I agree that you've decided what runs on it.
> The argument against this is that the government has a right to
> control (or at least monitor) what I do on my computer, in the event
> that I might do something illegal.
That'd be an unlawful search in the US. At least, I believe it is... They
need causation. AFAIK, there are *no* public networks in the US. I.e.,
networks are privately owned too, including the Internet. They need
causation to access them too, if the authorities are obeying the laws
themselves.
> ... [government] scare-mongering [methods] ...
I've discussed a few of these in the past. I'm not interested today, except
perhaps to say your claims seem a bit naive to me.
> > > [Yeah, I think his dope took effect there...]
> >
> > May you read that snipped part sober one day.
>
> Are you suggesting that I'm on drugs?
No... It's just that the last part seemed very incomprehensible to me.
Perhaps, I just didn't understand... Feel free to explain your thoughts.
> There is a lot of effort to confiscate guns here in America.
No, there isn't. Although, there have been attempts to increase
restrictions or controls. Fortunately or unfortunately, there is a large
and growing trend of many Americans who've never bought guns before, buying
guns now and recently. You could claim many different reasons:
- perceived persecution of Christians by the US gov't (Waco, Ruby Ridge,
FLDS)
- an unpopular President of the "wrong" race in a still strongly pro-white
country
- buying by parents of US servicemen for them
- failure of the government to prevent and control illegal immigration
esp. near Mexico
- fewer law enforcement officers due to State budget constraints
- positive effects on crime reduction of legalization of public gun
carrying in some States
- increased drug usage and buying by gangs to protect sales territory
- etc..
But, there are still restrictions on acceptable behavior with guns in
public. From the comments below, I'd guess you were in public and not in
compliance. Or, someone thought you weren't... Sorry, no plans to read
your .pdf.
> I was
> arrested and jailed for carrying a concealed weapon without a permit,
If so, then you likely violated the laws for public behavior with a weapon,
or an authority thought you did. Of course, they've thought many such
things are illegal when they aren't. Each State and the Fed. gov't has
their own laws. Sometimes local police forces don't correctly follow the
law too, i.e., refuse to allow concealed, or perform illegal searches for
them.
Rod Pemberton
Hugh Aguilar
> Do you have children of your own?
> > When I said that child-pornography doesn't
> > exist, I meant that nobody actually produces that stuff for their
> > enjoyment.
>
> No you didn't. If that was what you meant, then you would have said
> it, wouldn't you?
> What are you even *talking* about? If they don't produce it for their
> enjoyment, what do they produce it for? Do you mean that they produce
> it for *other* people's enjoyment? Ok. Fair enough. Ergo, child porn
> exists. Ergo child porn is real. QED.
The point that I'm trying to make is that child-pornography is
primarily produced for the purpose of discrediting people. It can be
used as weapon against individual people, or against entire classes
of
people (ISPs, for example). It is a very emotionally charged topic.
When people hear an accusation that somebody is a child-molester they
become extremely angry and they want to beat that person to death with
a baseball bat, and their ability for critical thinking fades out. We
have a saying here in America: "Frightened people do stupid things."
That's what it is all about.
It was a somewhat overly broad statement for me to say that child-
pornography is *never* produced for people's enjoyment. It is a big
planet of billions of people, so there presumably are perverts who are
sexually attracted to pre-teen children. I think that their number is
vanishingly small however; they don't really exist from any kind of
practical standpoint. By comparison, the popular media (propaganda)
would have us believe that this is a huge problem, and that something
drastic has to be done immediately to stop it. Almost always, when
propaganda strives to frighten the people into calling for drastic
governmental action, there is a hidden agenda.
I think that the internet is greatly feared by the American government
because it is an unrestricted medium of information exchange. The
"Truth Movement" is a serious problem for people whose continuing
power over the people requires that the people remain ignorant,
superstitious and fearful. I'm not just referring to the Truth
Movement's origin in 9-11-01 research, but to the broader scope of the
Truth Movement as a rebellion against superstitious faith in
television, and a return to critical thinking.
People who fear the Truth Movement can't directly attack it because
this obviously puts them on the side of untruth. It is easier to raise
the specter of child-pornography and child-molestation in order to
frighten the populace, and to use this as a justification for a crack-
down on the entire internet. Lawsuits against ISPs implying that the
ISPs are criminally liable for the content of the internet (child-
pornography) that is accessed through their computers, has nothing to
do with protecting children --- this is an effort to prevent the free
dissemination of information, and squelch the Truth Movement. The end
result will be that people will only be able to obtain information
about the world through carefully controlled official sources (such as
CNN), and this information will consist entirely of propaganda and
untruth. People will understand that they have lost their liberty, but
they will believe that such a strictly controlled internet is the only
way to protect their children from the hordes of perverts that are
supposedly hiding behind every bush. If anybody (such as myself)
complains about the abandonment of free speech, some pompous idiot
will ask: "Do you have children of your own?" The implication will be
that the complainer doesn't care about protecting children, or that he
is even sympathetic to the perverts. The truth however, is that this
danger never existed at all --- it was a nightmare fantasy unrelated
to reality --- the purpose from the beginning was to squelch the Truth
Movement.
Hugh Aguilar
> But, there are still restrictions on acceptable behavior with guns in
> public. From the comments below, I'd guess you were in public and not in
> compliance. Or, someone thought you weren't... Sorry, no plans to read
> your .pdf.
You don't know what you're talking about.
Jerry Avins
> On Nov 13, 10:38 pm, MarkWills <markrobertwi...@yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
>> Do you have children of your own?
> ...
>>> When I said that child-pornography doesn't
>>> exist, I meant that nobody actually produces that stuff for their
>>> enjoyment.
>> No you didn't. If that was what you meant, then you would have said
>> it, wouldn't you?
>> What are you even *talking* about? If they don't produce it for their
>> enjoyment, what do they produce it for? Do you mean that they produce
>> it for *other* people's enjoyment? Ok. Fair enough. Ergo, child porn
>> exists. Ergo child porn is real. QED.
>
> The point that I'm trying to make is that child-pornography is
> primarily produced for the purpose of discrediting people. It can be
> used as weapon against individual people, or against entire classes
> of
> people (ISPs, for example). It is a very emotionally charged topic.
> When people hear an accusation that somebody is a child-molester they
> become extremely angry and they want to beat that person to death with
> a baseball bat, and their ability for critical thinking fades out. We
> have a saying here in America: "Frightened people do stupid things."
> That's what it is all about.
Next you'll tell us that the government distributes crystal meth in
order to discredit people. Knowing that the authorities are evil must be
a great comfort.
Thomas Pornin
> Knowing that the authorities are evil must be a great comfort.
It is ! Being governed by evil scheming masterminds means that, at
least, there is someone in the government who has some competence.
Ideally, the chief of state would be a benevolent genius; barring that,
the malevolent genius type is at least someone who knows what he is
doing, and that is a very comforting thought.
--Thomas Pornin
Jerry Avins
:-)
Jonah Thomas
It comforted me until I thought about it a bit deeper.
For every position of great influence there are, say, six evil scheming
masterminds trying to grab the position from the one who has it. And so
we wind up with evil scheming masterminds who put all their attention
into doing whatever it takes to hold onto power, or else to grab power
from whoever has it. There is no goal that comes a close second or even
a distant second to gaining and maintaining power, because if you lose
power then you have nothing to work with.
And so every choice that is made to somehow improve the society (or to
do anything except consolidate power) is an afterthought, something that
happens in the rare instances when it simply does not matter, when the
scheming mastermind can do what he wants without repercussions.
Think of Josef Stalin. He ran purges. He purged his secret police, to
the point that they sat in their prison cells still doing their jobs,
looking at secret dossiers and deciding who to arrest because they hoped
a demonstration of loyalty and competence would help their own cases.
The secret police had to depend on purged members to do the work because
they didn't have enough trained men left. Stalin purged his officer
corps just before Hitler invaded. Perhaps as much as 20% of the
population died in the invasion. Russia has still not fully recovered
from the disaster of WWII, and may never. But through it all, through
everything, Stalin stayed on top. He finally died in his hospital bed,
surrounded by his lackeys who had never found a way to replace him --
until then. Stalin's actions may have been very bad for Russia and for
most Russians, but they worked for him.
So is it all random rewards that decide what the scheming masterminds
do? Or perhaps at some point a consortium of scheming masterminds got
together and set up a system that somehow rewards scheming masterminds
when they do good for the system as a whole, and punishes them when
their schemes do bad? I'd really like to believe in that latter idea.
Like the claim for free enterprise, that you can do whatever-the-hell
you want and the result will be that the economy always improves, that
anything you think is in your personal self-interest *will* turn out to
be the best thing for everybody that you could possibly do. It would be
so *nice* if that was true....
I'm not sure how to tell whether the government is set up so that
somehow scheming masterminds win by doing good. But you could make a
guess about it by looking at what the federal government is
accomplishing....
And compared to Stalinist Russia we're doing pretty good! Say what you
want about our federal government, still it can get a whole lot worse.
John Passaniti
> The point that I'm trying to make is that child-pornography is
> primarily produced for the purpose of discrediting people.
Ladies and gentlemen, Occam has left the building.
If your message is an example of critical thinking, then critical
thinking is dead. You killed it here with logical fallacy and
accepting conspiracy theory over evidence.
You're right that there is sometimes a disconnect between the _actual_
danger presented by something and the _perceived_ danger presented by
people with an agenda. So for the purpose of argument, let's just
accept that the Internet doesn't have child predators lurking in every
dark shadow, that 99.999% of parents should have little fear that
their son or daughter could be targeted by a child predator, and that
the actual amount of child porn available is quite small. There, so
we've now put the actual danger in perspective-- but that says
*nothing* to your "point" that child porn is _produced_ primarily to
"discredit" people.
So let's see how that works. Let's say you're part of some cabal that
wants to "discredit" someone. You scratch your chin trying to think
of the best way to do that and then it comes to you: child porn! And
it's so simple too! Here's Hugh Aguilar's easy 8-step plan to
"discrediting" someone:
1) Coerce a child to your lair. I hear candy works.
2) Rape, molest, or otherwise sexually abuse that child-- with
cameras rolling.
3) Prevent the child from telling others about what happened.
Options:
3a) Kill the child. After all, what's another murder when you're
trying to discredit someone? Avoid authorities.
3b) Keep the child alive, imprisoned; avoid authorities.
3c) Release the child with some threat of harm to keep them quiet;
avoid authorities.
4) Get the person you're discrediting to obtain the child porn you
produced.
4a) Send it as anonymous file attachment. That always stands up in
court and can never be traced!
4b) Trick them into visiting your child porn web site and downloading
your content. Does Sealand still have servers available?
5) Contact authorities to investigate this person, without also
drawing attention to how you knew they had child porn.
6) Wait for your target to obtain other child porn so the authorities
can build a case.
7) Wait for the trial.
8) Rub your hands together with glee as you offer your best mu-hah-
hah-hah laugh.
You're right, Hugh. That's a much simpler explanation for why child
porn is produced. Apparently Occam is sporting a beard these days.
Here's the real problem: Like most good critical thought, you started
off okay. You started off with healthy skepticism about claims and
questioned the premise. Good stuff. But then one of two things
happened. You replaced skepticism with cynicism and conspiracy
theories and stopped thinking critically. Or more likely, someone you
know, admire, or respect was caught with child porn; you can't deal
with them being a pervert, so you work backward to an exonerating
explanation-- that it was all just a set-up to "discredit" them. You
then generalize this to others.
MarkWills
It was a somewhat overly broad statement for me to say that child-
pornography is *never* produced for people's enjoyment. It is a big
planet of billions of people, so there presumably are perverts who are
sexually attracted to pre-teen children. I think that their number is
vanishingly small however; they don't really exist from any kind of
practical standpoint. By comparison, the popular media (propaganda)
would have us believe that this is a huge problem, and that something
drastic has to be done immediately to stop it. Almost always, when
propaganda strives to frighten the people into calling for drastic
governmental action, there is a hidden agenda.
Good morning Hugh. Thanks for explaining yourself in more detail. I
would tend to agree with most of the points you made, however there is
one thing I would like to add:
I think you are probably essentially correct: The proportion of child
molesters in society is probably very small (or at least, the
proportion of known ones). However, I would guess (I have no evidence)
that the proportion of these people using the internet is
disproportionally higer - since it offers relatively 'safe' protection
from detection. I have seen with my own eyes predators in kids chat
rooms (my daughter once called me in: "Hey dad, come look at this
creepy guy", Facebook, MSN, ICQ - these are honey pots for these types
of people.
So, there is definately a requirement for policing, detection, and
prosecuting these individuals. I don't think any reasonable person
would have an issue with that. The problem would appear to come when
the law makers get involved. I can only really speak with a UK hat on,
but, let's just say that (until the present socialist government came
to power, but don't even get me started on that) *reasonably* good,
correctly targeted proposals would be presented for debate, only to
emerge, enshrined in law, a shadow of their former selves, normally
with the *specific* intent for which they were proposed removed, to be
replaced with a *generic* law.
E.g.
Proposed: Child porn is illegal and is terrible thing. Lets make a law
to prevent it on the internet.
Outcome: Images of children *of a sexual nature* are now illegal
online.
Result: Seventy year old Grandfather of 6 from London is investigated
for child molestation, because he posted a picture of him kissing his
3 year old granddaughter at her birthday party on facebook, and some
'morally outraged' idiot reported it.
We have arrived at a point where (in the UK) the Government is
clamping down on it's society, ID cards, CCTV cameras, random stop and
searches, number plate recognition systems (travel data stored for 7
years), DNA databases etc etc.
Of course, the reasons given is always the same: "Won't somebody think
of the children", "If it saves one life", "Terrorism" etc.
When somebody objects, say, on privacy grounds, they are almost
treated like a pervert themselves: "Oh, so you *condone* child porn do
you? You think it's acceptable do you? What have you got to hide?"
etc.
So everybody keeps their mouth shut. Then you end up with far
overreaching laws, and a government nicely equipped with a battery of
laws that it can use to control its population with.
Nice.
Anyway, I've drifted far off the point again. Apologies. And I have to
take this tin hat off. It's getting heavy!
Hugh Aguilar
> You're right that there is sometimes a disconnect between the _actual_
> danger presented by something and the _perceived_ danger presented by
> people with an agenda.
> So let's see how that works. ...
Actually, it is nowhere near as complicated as you describe. Wild
accusations go a long way in our mass-media informed society. No
actual evidence is generally needed. Most people who are arrested will
accept a plea bargain to a lessor crime (especially to a less
emotionally-charged crime) even if they know that there is no evidence
whatsoever against them. Their greatest fear is to become the star
attraction on the front-page of the newspaper and/or the nightly news.
It is well known that an arrest will be reported in the newspaper with
the suspect's photograph and name taking up most of the front page.
Months later when the charges are eventually dropped, this will not be
on the front page, and it will be accompanied by a vague explanation:
"He got off on a legal technicality." Because of this threat, the
person decides to make the best out of a bad situation and accept the
plea bargain. People just compromise their way through life --- that
is the way of the world --- a little intimidation will work on 99.9%
of the population.
This thread started out discussing OSs, and especially the Google
Chrome OS, and it went downhill from there, turning into a debate on
child-pornography. Getting back to the original topic of OSs and
browsers, the most important thing that I can say is that there are
powerful people who are deeply afraid of the internet as a vehicle for
free speech. These people seriously want to censor the internet and
squelch the Truth Movement in order to maintain their power over the
people. As computer programmers we need to take responsibility for
preventing them from having the technological tools to easily
accomplish this. If we allow a closed-source browser and/or OS to
become the standard, then we are making their job too easy --- closed-
source software can easily be programmed to black-list Truther
websites, and also to automatically update their black-list over the
internet without the user's permission or knowledge. All of this talk
about "cloud computing" seems to be a blatant effort to take control
of people's computers externally, most likely for the purpose of
censoring the flow of information into the computer and monitoring the
personal information generated within the computer. If we programmers
allow this to become the standard, then later discover that our Fourth
Amendment rights have been lost, we will have nobody to blame except
ourselves. Non-technical computer users can be forgiven because they
don't know any better, but that is not true of programmers.
I think that we should not underestimate the influence of Beijing here
in America. The Chinese savings rate is over 50% now, and the American
rate is *below* 0%. There has been a massive transfer of dollars from
America to China in the last two decades. Because of this, a lot of
big American corporations (including Google) are setting up shop in
China in an effort to sell products to the "one billion customers"
there. To paraphrase Willie Sutton: "That's where the dollars are."
All of these corporations discover that they have to abandon the
American ethical system and adopt the much more flexible Chinese
ethical system in order to get along with the Beijing government. They
embrace corruption in China in a manner that would be considered
outrageous here in America. The problem however, is that these
corporations are also still doing business here in America. The
corporations are very much beholden to the Chinese government (they
are "in bed with Beijing"), and they begin to set policy here in
America according to Beijing dictates. This can include censoring the
internet in order to hide the corruption of the system from the
American people. This can also include spying on American citizens and
transferring the discovered information to Beijing. As computer
programmers we need to be careful that we don't become unwitting
stooges of Beijing. Its our responsibility to protect liberty in
America.
Aleksej Saushev
Oh, another layman historian.
Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman and Dwight Eisenhower ran purges as well
(do you remember Josef McCarthy?), the only difference is that it is those
victims who were to die unemployed are more known to public rather than
those who were imprisoned. And note that this practice continued even after
Stalin's death.
Second, who exactly was "purged" before Hitler invasion?
Note that it is that very officer corps made army soldiers untrained.
That army command you're talking about was unable to put troops on alert.
Navy command did it and succeeded in it, even though they weren't specifically
told to do so. Army and air force command failed to make their units to obey
their own orders during spring 1941, most of this information (if not all)
is open, you can go and read it.
Note, that exactly those army commanders were on Finnish war a year before,
thus they should've had real experience.
You may think that it is because all those officers who could were purged.
Not at all. All of west border commanders were high deserved ones, they
fought in Spain and in Karelia. Chief of General Staff at the time was
famous Zhukov who is praised for his talents.
Third, have you ever tried to understand what those "purges" were?
Read documents? Talked to those who lived at the time? Talked to "victims"?
Stalin got highly corrupt country, where crime was _profession_,
there were numerous those who made their living by theft, robbery, fraud
and all other kinds of crimes. Crime was their profession. It was "a matter
of honour" to swindle anyone outside narrow circle of relatives and friends.
Of course, this wasn't consistent with proposed new standards of life,
and the state tried to send all of those criminals to jail. Of course,
it is hard to imagine, how it dared to send into jail not only robbers
but all those saboteurs and even corrupt officers. All of those were
high deserved "Old Bolsheviks." As if that makes it impossible to
receive bribes.
Fourth, most of the population died not because of Stalin's government fault,
Hitler ordered not to follow military conventions and established quite
specific regime on invaded territory. Not to mention that 20% is too high
estimation, those were reached only in areas of fierce civil resistance,
e.g. Belarus and Krasnodar, figures around 15% are more realistic.
Fifth, objectively there was no other person to replace Stalin.
The political situation in early 1930s was so that any top person
had real chances to be killed if he was against "Old Bolsheviks",
they couldn't do anything, all development stalled, and Stalin had
to fight against them just to do anything except making their life
better (by the time "Old Bolsheviks" lived in luxury even when Russia
was in hunger). And this situation changed slowly till late 1940s.
Sixth. Churchill, de Gaulle, Harriman admitted that Stalin's rule was an
unbelievable success for Russia and its inabitants. Probably those
persons' opinions are more valuable. Do you think that you or other layman
historians are smarter than British prime minister? French President?
U.S.A. ambassador to U.S.S.R.? Maybe this should make you to correct
your beliefs somehow.
> And compared to Stalinist Russia we're doing pretty good! Say what you
> want about our federal government, still it can get a whole lot worse.
Compared to Stalin's Russia you live in quite a different time.
At that time U.S.A. lived comparatively worse. Of course you're hardly
to read about it, U.S.A. ambassadors' and other diplomats' notes are
not popular reading. It is way easier to speculate basing on propaganda
rather than investigating anything on your own.
--
HE CE3OH...
MarkWills
And where would we find this information? From Russian sources?
If so, how are we to know its real? Stalin had a nice habit of re-
writing historical documents, official documents, and even having
photographs changed when it was prudent to do so.
Want an example? May I suggest you look into what happened to 5000
Polish military officers after Russia invaded Poland? You might want
to look at the records that were created, in all their names, showing
their 'release' back to Poland. Of course, in actuality, they were all
shot at Lubyanka.
Of course, when they failed to turn up back home, the Russian line was
"Well, they must have gone somewhere else". Eventually the mass graves
were discovered by the Germans, and their uncovering filmed to serve
as documentary evidence.
My point being, while yes, there is certainly an alternative point of
view, any Russian evidence or historical literature is generally
perceived to be discredited or at least questionable, because the
Party had a rather convenient habit of changing official documents and
statements to suit their needs. Even the literature and the music of
the time had be passed by Government committee censors to make sure it
followed party dictum (though Russia was not alone in this, I believe
the situation was the same in Nazi Germany).
I'm not saying that I am right and you are wrong. I'm only saying it
is difficult to believe/rely on official Russian accounts as facts. I
have worked in nearly all the CIS countries. I speak some Russian. On
my travels, I have met many Russians, Georgians, Kazakhs, Uzbkeks and
Azeris that admire and hate Stalin in equal measure. There are
certainly two sides to every story. It's knowing what to believe that
is the difficult bit!
Andrew Haley
> On Nov 13, 4:44 am, Andrew Haley <andre...@littlepinkcloud.invalid>
> wrote:
> > > Why does anyone even care what the marketshare is?
> >
> > Why does anybody care about anything?
> >
> > a. The market share gives those who care about free software some
> > idea how well they're doing.
> >
> > b. It's interesting.
> >
> > Comment is free, but facts are sacred.
> Software is a service industry --- the concept of "market share" is
> meaningless because there aren't any widgets to count.
Not at all. In this case, the market share is the proportion of
people using a particular system.
> I run Ubuntu on my computer but I didn't buy it because it is free,
> so my use of Ubuntu doesn't count toward Linux's market share.
Of couse it does. This has nothing to do with payment.
> Your comment "facts are sacred" did get a laugh out of me though, so
> that's got to count for something.
Andrew.
Jonah Thomas
> Jonah Thomas <jeth...@gmail.com> writes:
Yes, I treasure my amateur status.
> Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman and Dwight Eisenhower ran purges as
> well(do you remember Josef McCarthy?), the only difference is that it
> is those victims who were to die unemployed are more known to public
> rather than those who were imprisoned. And note that this practice
> continued even after Stalin's death.
Yes, it's interesting how the various systems -- german, russian,
american, english -- tended to copy each other even before they found
out what worked better and what worked worse.
> Second, who exactly was "purged" before Hitler invasion?
>
> Note that it is that very officer corps made army soldiers untrained.
> That army command you're talking about was unable to put troops on
> alert. Navy command did it and succeeded in it, even though they
> weren't specifically told to do so. Army and air force command failed
> to make their units to obey their own orders during spring 1941, most
> of this information (if not all) is open, you can go and read it.
It is always risky to speculate about how the history would inevitably
have happened if things were different. Americans tend to guess that the
trained military officers who were purged would have done a better job
of fighting Hitler than their less-trained replacements. But who knows,
really? The more important point to Stalin is that the old officers were
not loyal to him, and they might have caused some sort of trouble. My
claim is that for Stalin personally that fact trumps any amount of
competence at fighting germany. What good was it for Stalin if the USSR
stopped the german invasion but he personally did not live to see it?
> Note, that exactly those army commanders were on Finnish war a year
> before, thus they should've had real experience.
>
> You may think that it is because all those officers who could were
> purged. Not at all. All of west border commanders were high deserved
> ones, they fought in Spain and in Karelia. Chief of General Staff at
> the time was famous Zhukov who is praised for his talents.
And Zhukov found his opening for promotions because of previous purges.
> Third, have you ever tried to understand what those "purges" were?
> Read documents? Talked to those who lived at the time? Talked to
> "victims"?
I have read some documents. Of course, the documents available to me
over the years have tended to be written by people who did not like
Stalin. My sources are biased. I have talked to a few people who lived
through some of that. There was an old Estonian couple who lived at my
college who wanted to talk at great length about how awful the russians
were. My first wife knew an old estonian woman who wanted to talk at
great length about how awful the russians were. She often used the exact
same phrases the other estonians did. I listened at some length to some
old russian jews who came to the USA after the russian government let
them leave. Etc. All my sources are deeply biased.
> Stalin got highly corrupt country, where crime was _profession_,
> there were numerous those who made their living by theft, robbery,
> fraud and all other kinds of crimes. Crime was their profession. It
> was "a matter of honour" to swindle anyone outside narrow circle of
> relatives and friends. Of course, this wasn't consistent with proposed
> new standards of life, and the state tried to send all of those
> criminals to jail.
This has been a continuing problem for a very long time, hasn't it? I
read a book by an american who was arrested and sent to siberia, who
interacted with the criminal culture and attributed his survival to it.
They got him a series of soft jobs -- in a clinic, as a welder, etc --
where he had status, supplies to trade, and usually enough to eat. I
have read a collection of Hodja vs Clever Peter stories, and they seem
to provide the essence of the criminal culture although they are more
bulgarian/turkish.
The USA doesn't have as much of a criminal culture. Traditionally recent
immigrants who were discriminated against would develop one, and then
within a couple of generations as they were accepted into traditional
well-paying jobs they would tend to give it up. There was an irish
mafia, an italian/sicilian mafia, a chinese mafia, a korean mafia, and
each one dwindles away as better opportunities open up. It's
particularly over the last 30 or so years that the USA has been
developing a permanent criminal class, with members who accept prison as
just an occupational hazard. Largely black, people who have no better
prospect than crime which does not actually pay very well....
> Of course,
> it is hard to imagine, how it dared to send into jail not only robbers
> but all those saboteurs and even corrupt officers. All of those were
> high deserved "Old Bolsheviks." As if that makes it impossible to
> receive bribes.
I am not ready to argue whether the purges were better for the USSR than
any other alternative. My claim is that it was irrelevant whether the
purges were good for the USSR. Stalin thought they were good for him
personally, and no one was ready to oppose him. I believe that is the
way things get done in most governments most of the time. One ideology
may be better than another, but the effect of ideology on government is
usually far less than the effect of perceived self-interest by people
who have power.
> Fourth, most of the population died not because of Stalin's government
> fault, Hitler ordered not to follow military conventions and
> established quite specific regime on invaded territory. Not to mention
> that 20% is too high estimation, those were reached only in areas of
> fierce civil resistance, e.g. Belarus and Krasnodar, figures around
> 15% are more realistic.
I am certain that the figures I have for civilian russian losses are not
very accurate. I am willing to believe that someone somewhere might have
accurate numbers but on principle I tend to doubt it. So I said "perhaps
as much as 20%". If you want to believe any fraction between 10% and 20%
I will not argue that you are wrong. I personally would tend to agree
15% would be more realistic than 20%.
I tend to think that a better plan to slow the german advance might
likely have resulted in fewer civilian casualties, and to the extent
that is true then Stalin's government was at fault. But once again I
find myself arguing how things would be if they were different, and such
claims are notoriously hard to prove.
> Fifth, objectively there was no other person to replace Stalin.
> The political situation in early 1930s was so that any top person
> had real chances to be killed if he was against "Old Bolsheviks",
> they couldn't do anything, all development stalled, and Stalin had
> to fight against them just to do anything except making their life
> better (by the time "Old Bolsheviks" lived in luxury even when Russia
> was in hunger). And this situation changed slowly till late 1940s.
Now it is your turn in the barrel. You say that there was no alternative
to Stalin, and that Stalin did the best work possible given the problems
he was facing. When you claim that no alternative could have been
better, you are arguing about how things had to be if they were
different. You are probably wrong, but how could anyone ever find out
for sure?
> Sixth. Churchill, de Gaulle, Harriman admitted that Stalin's rule was
> an unbelievable success for Russia and its inabitants. Probably those
> persons' opinions are more valuable. Do you think that you or other
> layman historians are smarter than British prime minister? French
> President? U.S.A. ambassador to U.S.S.R.? Maybe this should make you
> to correct your beliefs somehow.
I believe that I and many other amateurs are far more honest than the
british prime minister, the french president, etc. Those were people who
knew government secrets and couldn't talk about them because they must
remain secret. They had to carefully adjust their language in case
someone thought they were being expedient. And of course all of them
were living in a fantasy land, where they had to guess what might
happen. To some extent we know what did happen. So for example, was
Stalin right to depend on his nonagression pact with Hitler? If it had
held he would have been in far better shape, he could keep the bulk of
his armor in the east facing off japan etc. Looking back, it is obvious
that Hitler was losing the arms race and needed to attack as soon as he
could -- the more he delayed the stronger russia would be. But that's
only obvious looking back. When the russians showed german experts their
new weapons and germany had nothing comparable to show the russian
experts, should russians have guessed that germany was falling behind?
Or should they have guessed that Hitler was not showing them everything?
Hindsight is so much easier....
> > And compared to Stalinist Russia we're doing pretty good! Say what
> > you want about our federal government, still it can get a whole lot
> > worse.
>
> Compared to Stalin's Russia you live in quite a different time.
Yes we do! And we have the example of Stalin's russia to remind us that
things can get a whole lot worse.
> At that time U.S.A. lived comparatively worse. Of course you're hardly
> to read about it, U.S.A. ambassadors' and other diplomats' notes are
> not popular reading. It is way easier to speculate basing on
> propaganda rather than investigating anything on your own.
Yes, it is. Those were bad times for the USA. I had an uncle who was a
skilled carpenter and as a result made a dollar a day. Another uncle
drove gasoline trucks. On Pearl Harbor day he realised that the USA
would join the war and we would have gasoline rationing. So he filled
the tanks at a failed gas station, thinking that after rationing he
could sell the gas on the black market. But someone reported him for
stopping a Texaco truck at an ESSO station, and rather than jail him for
profiteering the authorities let him enlist in the army.
It's hard to compare lives in different nations. The information that
our ambassadors got was of course highly biased; the russians wouldn't
want it any other way. And by turning the simplest facts into national
secrets, they did create enough uncertainty in the americans that there
was never a direct high-intensity war between USSR and USA, even through
a time when the US government was utterly incompetent to prevent such a
war. To my way of thinking, preventing that war was the single most
important thing the russian government could do, and they did it. Would
the war have happened if they had done something different? Who can say
with any certainty?
But what they did worked, and I can't really ask more than that one
minimal goal from them.
Hugh Aguilar
wrote:
> > Software is a service industry --- the concept of "market share" is
> > meaningless because there aren't any widgets to count.
>
> Not at all. In this case, the market share is the proportion of
> people using a particular system.
>
> > I run Ubuntu on my computer but I didn't buy it because it is free,
> > so my use of Ubuntu doesn't count toward Linux's market share.
>
> Of couse it does. This has nothing to do with payment.
If a tree falls in the forest and there is nobody there to hear it,
does it make any noise?
If Linux is installed on a computer and there is no sales-clerk there
to print a receipt, does it count for market-share?
Nowadays, software is a service industry. Programmers get paid to
write software. The software itself is not sold however; only the
labor of writing the software is sold. The days of shrink-wrapped
software packages being sold at CompUSA are largely gone. Back in the
1980s, people bought horizontal-market software such as word-
processors at the store like any commodity, but nobody does that any
more. All of that horizontal-market software is available under GPL
gratis. If you wrote a word-processor program and tried to sell it,
nobody would buy it. Or maybe one person would buy it, and then
distribute pirated copies all over the world. You would go broke; all
of your time and effort would be wasted.
Honestly, I don't understand why people write horizontal-market GPL
code. I use LaTeX/KILE all of the time. I know that LaTeX and TeX were
written in an academic environment and the authors got paid with
government grants. Also, they had graduate students available to do a
lot of the work in exchange for getting a degree. I don't think KILE
was written in an academic environment though. KILE has a screen
asking for donations, but I can't imagine that they receive enough
money to justify the effort that went into writing KILE. It is also
true though, that KILE is mostly a GUI wrapper around LaTeX and there
are software development systems available that make writing GUI
wrappers fairly easy. There was not as much work put into writing KILE
as was put into writing LaTeX/TeX. Maybe the people who wrote KILE
just did it for fun and/or for their own personal use. In any case,
I'm the one who benefits because I contributed neither work nor money,
and I still get a nice piece of software out of the deal.
On a related note, has Mark Shuttleworth come anywhere near recouping
his investment? I doubt it. As far as I know, Ubuntu was and is a
purely altruistic project. Che Guevara would be proud!
Programmers mostly get paid for writing vertical-market software. A
lot of this is open-source too, because the people who paid to have it
written are the only ones who need it. For example, my MFX compiler is
now in the public domain as far as I know. It is only useful to people
who have paid for the MiniForth processor. Testra is in the business
of selling hardware, not software. John Hart is an electrical
engineer. He doesn't know very much about computer programming, and he
doesn't pay computer programmers very well --- he considers computer
programming to be a support service.
Hugh Aguilar
> Oh, another layman historian.
As you consider yourself to be more than a layman in regard to Russian
history, perhaps you could answer a question for me. I have read that
Russia won the Battle of Stalingrad primarily because an outbreak of
Tuleremia (a disease related to bubonic plague) decimated the German
troops. There is suspicion that this was a bio-weapon for these
reasons:
1.) It hit the Germans disproportionately compared to the Russions.
Given the close proximity of the soldiers in the city, this was
unrealistic.
2.) There were reports of Russian airplanes seen dusting the German
soldiers with some kind of fine powder.
3.) Tuleremia is a disease of the jungle. There are no other examples
of a Tuleremia outbreak in even moderately cool climates, and
certainly not in the notoriously cold Russia.
The idea is that Russia resorted to a bio-weapon in Stalingrad because
Stalingrad is geographically isolated and there was little chance of
"blowback," in the sense of the disease making its way to Russian
population centers such as Moscow. Besides that, the Russians were
going to lose Stalingrad anyway, so if all of the citizens there died
of Tuleremia the effect would be the same as if Germany captured the
city and killed the citizens in a death camp.
Is there any truth to this suspicion?
Elizabeth D Rather
> On Nov 16, 3:47 am, Andrew Haley <andre...@littlepinkcloud.invalid>
> wrote:
>>> Software is a service industry --- the concept of "market share" is
>>> meaningless because there aren't any widgets to count.
>> Not at all. In this case, the market share is the proportion of
>> people using a particular system.
>>
>>> I run Ubuntu on my computer but I didn't buy it because it is free,
>>> so my use of Ubuntu doesn't count toward Linux's market share.
>> Of couse it does. This has nothing to do with payment.
>
> If a tree falls in the forest and there is nobody there to hear it,
> does it make any noise?
>
> If Linux is installed on a computer and there is no sales-clerk there
> to print a receipt, does it count for market-share?
Absolutely. If I am writing a program that I wish to distribute widely
(regardless of whether it's commercial, GPL, or whatever), it's helpful
to me to know what the most popular platforms are that this program
should be able to run on or be compatible with.
> Nowadays, software is a service industry. Programmers get paid to
> write software. The software itself is not sold however; only the
> labor of writing the software is sold. The days of shrink-wrapped
> software packages being sold at CompUSA are largely gone. Back in the
> 1980s, people bought horizontal-market software such as word-
> processors at the store like any commodity, but nobody does that any
> more. All of that horizontal-market software is available under GPL
> gratis. If you wrote a word-processor program and tried to sell it,
> nobody would buy it. Or maybe one person would buy it, and then
> distribute pirated copies all over the world. You would go broke; all
> of your time and effort would be wasted.
I don't know what universe you live in, but the one I live in operates
quite differently. I and everyone I exchange documents with depend on
commercial programs: MS Office, Quicken, Quickbooks, Adobe Photoshop,
Adobe Acrobat, etc. I have tried the GPL competitor for MS Office: it
was barely usable, and no one else could open my documents properly, so
I gave up. Microsoft, Adobe, and Intuit have felt the recession like
everyone else, but their revenue is still substantial. Sales of Windows
7 are through the roof (I bought one). All the major companies who make
commercial software have implemented security measures; they aren't
perfect, but they work pretty well. And there are a lot of people whose
ethics don't permit stealing or illegally copying software. I respect
and admire them.
Good software is expensive to develop. The expense starts with
programmers, but doesn't end there. A software product requires
documentation, extensive testing, technical support, and marketing, as
well as code. Programmers deserve to be paid for their labor, and a
company that pays them and provides all the additional value-added to
make their programs available to users also deserve to be paid.
Cheers,
Elizabeth
--
==================================================
Elizabeth D. Rather (US & Canada) 800-55-FORTH
FORTH Inc. +1 310.999.6784
5959 West Century Blvd. Suite 700
Los Angeles, CA 90045
http://www.forth.com
"Forth-based products and Services for real-time
applications since 1973."
==================================================
Hugh Aguilar
> If I am writing a program that I wish to distribute widely
> (regardless of whether it's commercial, GPL, or whatever), it's helpful
> to me to know what the most popular platforms are that this program
> should be able to run on or be compatible with.
Why do you want to distribute your program widely? Normally the
customer contacts the programmer first, and hires him/her to write a
program according to a specification (which will usually specify the
OS and/or hardware platform). The programmer doesn't just write
something and distribute it widely in the hopes that somebody
somewhere might need it.
> I don't know what universe you live in, but the one I live in operates
> quite differently. I and everyone I exchange documents with depend on
> commercial programs: MS Office, Quicken, Quickbooks, Adobe Photoshop,
> Adobe Acrobat, etc.
Everybody that I know (including the Factor folks) uses LaTeX. If I
were to bring up the subject of Microsoft Word, they would think
"novice!" I don't know what people use for bookkeeping (because I
don't have any money beyond what is in my wallet), but it is possible
that Windows software is used in this case. If there isn't any Linux
bookkeeping software available, maybe I should write it and distribute
it widely to see what happens. Getting certified would be the
difficult part.
> And there are a lot of people whose
> ethics don't permit stealing or illegally copying software. I respect
> and admire them.
My ethics prevent me from pirating software. I paid my $30 shareware
fee to use WinEdt for writing LaTeX under Windows. That was a waste of
money, as I later found the Linux program KILE to be much better, but
I did pay for WinEdt while I was using it. I doubt that very many
people do this however.
> Good software is expensive to develop. The expense starts with
> programmers, but doesn't end there. A software product requires
> documentation, extensive testing, technical support, and marketing, as
> well as code. Programmers deserve to be paid for their labor, and a
> company that pays them and provides all the additional value-added to
> make their programs available to users also deserve to be paid.
I'd like to get paid for writing software again. It is mostly just
something that I do for fun though. From what I've seen, all of the
money is in selling hardware. Writing the software that runs on the
hardware is just a support service. When I was at Testra, every time
that I finished writing a program I got laid off and had to go find
another job somewhere. Computer programmers are not important people
as compared to electrical engineers (or even electrical technicians).
Hugh Aguilar
> 3.) Tuleremia is a disease of the jungle. There are no other examples
> of a Tuleremia outbreak in even moderately cool climates, and
> certainly not in the notoriously cold Russia.
I read the Wikipedia article (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tularemia)
and it didn't describe Tularemia as a jungle disease, so I was likely
misremembering that part. I think that it is true however that
Stalingrad is too cold for a naturally occurring outbreak. The book
that I originally read was "Biohazard" by Ken Alibek (http://
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenneth_Alibek), although I no longer have a
copy to refer to.
Elizabeth D Rather
> On Nov 16, 8:32 pm, Elizabeth D Rather <erat...@forth.com> wrote:
>> If I am writing a program that I wish to distribute widely
>> (regardless of whether it's commercial, GPL, or whatever), it's helpful
>> to me to know what the most popular platforms are that this program
>> should be able to run on or be compatible with.
>
> Why do you want to distribute your program widely? Normally the
> customer contacts the programmer first, and hires him/her to write a
> program according to a specification (which will usually specify the
> OS and/or hardware platform). The programmer doesn't just write
> something and distribute it widely in the hopes that somebody
> somewhere might need it.
That is one scenario. Another is a person or company sees a niche for a
software product and designs one to be sold. There is a very large and
thriving market for such programs, ranging from shareware up to
companies like Microsoft, Intuit, and Adobe, whose products sell
millions and millions of copies. FORTH, Inc. and MPE are somewhere in
that spectrum, above the shareware products but still small businesses.
Both FORTHm, Inc. and MPE make a living from a combination of custom
programming and product sales.
>> I don't know what universe you live in, but the one I live in operates
>> quite differently. I and everyone I exchange documents with depend on
>> commercial programs: MS Office, Quicken, Quickbooks, Adobe Photoshop,
>> Adobe Acrobat, etc.
>
> Everybody that I know (including the Factor folks) uses LaTeX. If I
> were to bring up the subject of Microsoft Word, they would think
> "novice!" I don't know what people use for bookkeeping (because I
> don't have any money beyond what is in my wallet), but it is possible
> that Windows software is used in this case. If there isn't any Linux
> bookkeeping software available, maybe I should write it and distribute
> it widely to see what happens. Getting certified would be the
> difficult part.
It sounds as though most of the people you know are engineers or other
techies, because that's where Linux and LaTeX are most pipular. The
vast majority of computer users are non-technical, and have very
different tastes and expectations. I assure you, there are many, many
people using Word and related products. I personally do not like Word
much, but I need to write documents that can be circulated among groups
of people, and Word is the portable format they all can handle.
...
>
>> Good software is expensive to develop. The expense starts with
>> programmers, but doesn't end there. A software product requires
>> documentation, extensive testing, technical support, and marketing, as
>> well as code. Programmers deserve to be paid for their labor, and a
>> company that pays them and provides all the additional value-added to
>> make their programs available to users also deserve to be paid.
>
> I'd like to get paid for writing software again. It is mostly just
> something that I do for fun though. From what I've seen, all of the
> money is in selling hardware. Writing the software that runs on the
> hardware is just a support service. When I was at Testra, every time
> that I finished writing a program I got laid off and had to go find
> another job somewhere. Computer programmers are not important people
> as compared to electrical engineers (or even electrical technicians).
That scenario is typical of embedded system programming, but common PC
sotware development is quite a different world.
MarkWills
It's just an alternative viewpoint. Equally, designing the hardware
that the software runs on is a support service.
The company I was last working for was a large controls company, with
particular hardware requirements that didn't really change much. The
hardware engineers were freelance contractors. Once the hardware was
done, they were gone. The software was all that mattered.
Consider a large PLC (programmable logic controller) company like
Allen Bradley - the software is the product. The hardware is merely
the media that delivers it and allows it to run.
Regards
Mark.
ken...@cix.compulink.co.uk
jeth...@gmail.com (Jonah Thomas) wrote:
> He finally died in his hospital bed,
> surrounded by his lackeys
Actually no, he died in his bedroom at a Dacha when prompt medical
attention may have saved him. There was no one prepared to enter his
room without invitation and by the time it became obvious that something
was wrong it was too late. Off course there was also the problem of
finding someone prepared to risk treating him. Being the doctor of a
deceased dictator was risky, especially as Stalin had just had the show
trials and purges of the "Doctor's Plot".
See (Court of the Red Tsar)
Ken Young
ken...@cix.compulink.co.uk
<0a1d34ff-ef9f-4fcb...@l13g2000yqb.googlegroups.com>,
markrob...@yahoo.co.uk (MarkWills) wrote:
> And where would we find this information? From Russian sources?
There has recently been an attempt especially in Russia to rehabilitate
Stalin. Even so it is clear that Stalin remained on top and the only
"Old Bolshevics" that had any influence were those of his personal
circle. The military and other purges were certainly originated by
Stalin. Apart from the need to keep the army out of politics the wrong
lessons were taken from the Spanish Civil War. The idea of independent
armour units was discredited and the chief proponents of them were
purged. The events of 1939-40 caused a rethink. The events of 1941
resulted in many purged officers being released from the Gulags and
returned to duty.
The best English language book I have come across is "Court of the Red
Tsar" though it is not to hand and I forget the author. One caveat I
have the paperback version and to reduce size all references were
eliminated, you need the hard back for notes and references though the
text is the same.
Ken Young
Andrew Haley
> On Nov 16, 3:47?am, Andrew Haley <andre...@littlepinkcloud.invalid>
> wrote:
> > > Software is a service industry --- the concept of "market share" is
> > > meaningless because there aren't any widgets to count.
> >
> > Not at all. In this case, the market share is the proportion of
> > people using a particular system.
> >
> > > I run Ubuntu on my computer but I didn't buy it because it is free,
> > > so my use of Ubuntu doesn't count toward Linux's market share.
> >
> > Of couse it does. This has nothing to do with payment.
> If a tree falls in the forest and there is nobody there to hear it,
> does it make any noise?
That depends on your definition of "noise".
> If Linux is installed on a computer and there is no sales-clerk
> there to print a receipt, does it count for market-share?
That depends on your definition of "market share". In this context,
yes, it does, since the number of users is the definition we've been
using.
> On a related note, has Mark Shuttleworth come anywhere near
> recouping his investment? I doubt it. As far as I know, Ubuntu was
> and is a purely altruistic project.
Canonical claim now to be in profit at a sustainable level.
Andrew.
Jerry Avins
> .... I personally do not like Word
> much, but I need to write documents that can be circulated among groups
> of people, and Word is the portable format they all can handle.
I use Open Office, and I don't have the trouble you did. Did you export
in .doc format?
Rod Pemberton
> If a tree falls in the forest and there is nobody there to hear it,
> does it make any noise?
Yes. Put a sound activated recorder there. You may have to artificially
induce a tree to fall.
"Which came first, the chicken or the egg?"
Egg.
(Birds evolved from dinosaurs which layed eggs. "Which came first, the
dinosaur or the egg?")
> Nowadays, software is a service industry. Programmers get paid to
> write software. The software itself is not sold however; only the
> labor of writing the software is sold.
The labor of writing software has never been sold. It may be the largest
upfront cost of software, but it's a fixed cost. It becomes a trivially
insignificant component of the continuing cost of producing a software
product. When it comes to software, it costs a few cents or less to
commercially duplicate a CD. Do you honestly think after millions of copies
of MS products sold that they are still paying off the cost of progamming?
If so, how'd they become a financial monopoly? How'd their profit margins
reach 67% or higher? Companies that have exceptionally large upfront
(nuclear) or continuing costs (automotive and transportation manufacturing)
can't reach such profitability. Do you think steel is a large component of
the cost of manufacturing a car? Do you think union labor cost is a large
component of making a car? The automotive company's executives have been
screaming about not making a profit because of exceptionally high union
labor costs since the 1940's... It's just not true. The entire vehicle
cost, including union labor, in automotive industry is _below_ 10% of the
consumer cost of a car. So, why are you paying $30K or $60K USD, for a car
which costs $3K or $6K? The remainder goes for management and other
salaried employees (lawyers, designers, engineers), insurance, financing,
healthcare and retirement, automotive plants and equipment, vehicle testing,
etc. But, their industry has large upfront and continuing costs, unlike
software. An additional penny in costs on some part can mean hundreds of
millions in extra capital needed to manufacture a car. That's why a ten
cent safety feature won't be saving your life. The continuing cost of a
software product is a blank CD, a manual, and a box. Some recyled paper and
plastic. Didn't Buffett's recent purchase of Burlington Northern surprise
you? In addition to avoiding industries he doesn't understand, Buffett has
always eschewed industries with high capital reinvestment costs after his
experiences with the textile industry, the original business of Berkshire
Hathaway. He has preferred industries like finance and insurance ("paper"
product industries) instead of manufacturing or transportation.
> If you wrote a word-processor program and tried to sell it,
> nobody would buy it.
MS is still selling MS Office.
> Or maybe one person would buy it, and then
> distribute pirated copies all over the world.
That has happened.
> You would go broke; all
> of your time and effort would be wasted.
It hurts corporations, like MS, financially, but hasn't stopped sales.
> I use LaTeX/KILE all of the time.
Why? Nobody _wants_ stuff in that format, or .ps, or .doc. If it's not
ASCII or .pdf, I really don't want to see it at all. I make an exception
for .html.
Rod Pemberton
Elizabeth D Rather
> Elizabeth D Rather wrote:
>
>
>> .... I personally do not like Word much, but I need to write
>> documents that can be circulated among groups of people, and Word is
>> the portable format they all can handle.
>
> I use Open Office, and I don't have the trouble you did. Did you export
> in .doc format?
>
> Jerry
Yes. All kinds of things changed: colors, fonts, spacing, ... Of
course, it was a fairly complex document, but that's what I do a lot of.
Elizabeth D Rather
>
> The labor of writing software has never been sold. It may be the largest
> upfront cost of software, but it's a fixed cost. It becomes a trivially
> insignificant component of the continuing cost of producing a software
> product. When it comes to software, it costs a few cents or less to
> commercially duplicate a CD. Do you honestly think after millions of copies
> of MS products sold that they are still paying off the cost of progamming?
I first used Word 1.0 in the mid-80's. A few features are still
recognizable in Word 2007, but not many. They have a huge team of
programmers working on bug fixes, security issues, and new features all
the time. No company selling a software product can stop ongoing
development and support; they'll die in a very short time.
> If so, how'd they become a financial monopoly? How'd their profit margins
> reach 67% or higher?
Where'd you get that figure? MSFT reported an annualized quarterly
profit of 27.66% for its last quarter (ending 9/30). That's quite good
compares with the industry average of 11.23%, but nothing like what
you're quoting.
...
>
> Why? Nobody _wants_ stuff in that format, or .ps, or .doc. If it's not
> ASCII or .pdf, I really don't want to see it at all. I make an exception
> for .html.
.doc is the lingua franca for passing documents around a group working
on a project or collaborating on a proposal, book, manual, etc. .pdf is
good for a finished document, though.
Uwe Kloß
> Jerry Avins wrote:
>> Elizabeth D Rather wrote:
>>
>>
>>> .... I personally do not like Word much, but I need to write
>>> documents that can be circulated among groups of people, and Word is
>>> the portable format they all can handle.
>>
>> I use Open Office, and I don't have the trouble you did. Did you
>> export in .doc format?
>>
>> Jerry
>
> Yes. All kinds of things changed: colors, fonts, spacing, ... Of
> course, it was a fairly complex document, but that's what I do a lot of.
Computers running MS Word do run Adobe Reader.
Unless you need the circulating documents to be modified while
circulating, you might consider exportig it to pdf.
Uwe
Elizabeth D Rather
Agreed, but often I am working on a project with collaborators, and we
do need to be able to modify the document. Office 2007 introduced new
file formats, which is also a pain, because not everyone has 07, so I do
have to save as .doc instead of .docx, but at least that works reliably.
Jerry Avins
> Jerry Avins wrote:
>> Elizabeth D Rather wrote:
>>
>>
>>> .... I personally do not like Word much, but I need to write
>>> documents that can be circulated among groups of people, and Word is
>>> the portable format they all can handle.
>>
>> I use Open Office, and I don't have the trouble you did. Did you
>> export in .doc format?
>>
>> Jerry
>
> Yes. All kinds of things changed: colors, fonts, spacing, ... Of
> course, it was a fairly complex document, but that's what I do a lot of.
If you get a chance to try the latest version (in your spare time, of
course) I'd like to know how you find it. I haven't had your problem,
but I don't do very complex writing. When I want to deliver .doc format,
I use that while composing.
Stephen Pelc
<era...@forth.com> wrote:
>.doc is the lingua franca for passing documents around a group working
>on a project or collaborating on a proposal, book, manual, etc. .pdf is
>good for a finished document, though.
I'll have to agree here. However, recent versions of OpenOffice have
been good enough for our group working, even with .doc as the transfer
format. The trick is not to go with the latest, greatest MS format,
but to stay a version or two behind. Similarly, don't use the
latest, greatest features of Word.
Just like code, you need to lay out for portability.
Stephen
--
Stephen Pelc, steph...@mpeforth.com
MicroProcessor Engineering Ltd - More Real, Less Time
133 Hill Lane, Southampton SO15 5AF, England
tel: +44 (0)23 8063 1441, fax: +44 (0)23 8033 9691
web: http://www.mpeforth.com - free VFX Forth downloads
Hugh Aguilar
> It sounds as though most of the people you know are engineers or other
> techies, because that's where Linux and LaTeX are most pipular. The
> vast majority of computer users are non-technical, and have very
> different tastes and expectations. I assure you, there are many, many
> people using Word and related products. I personally do not like Word
> much, but I need to write documents that can be circulated among groups
> of people, and Word is the portable format they all can handle.
Why would I want to communicate with non-technical people?
IMO, the best way to communicate with non-technical people is by
beating them with a stick.
One nice thing about LaTeX files is that they are plain ascii; I can
write a computer program to generate LaTeX files using data that came
from wherever it is that data comes from. This works especially well
in situations where a document has to be generated periodically and
must incorporate a new set of data each time. I am a computer
programmer after all, not a data-entry clerk, so I always gravitate
toward software that allows me to automate what I'm doing. I hate
using software such as word-processors in which I have to do
everything manually, endlessly pointing and clicking. That kind of
work is just too boring. Humans are tool-making animals; if we aren't
allowed to make tools then we become bored and unhappy, because we
have denied our nature.
Elizabeth D Rather
> On Nov 17, 1:04 am, Elizabeth D Rather <erat...@forth.com> wrote:
>> It sounds as though most of the people you know are engineers or other
>> techies, because that's where Linux and LaTeX are most pipular. The
>> vast majority of computer users are non-technical, and have very
>> different tastes and expectations. I assure you, there are many, many
>> people using Word and related products. I personally do not like Word
>> much, but I need to write documents that can be circulated among groups
>> of people, and Word is the portable format they all can handle.
>
> Why would I want to communicate with non-technical people?
You may not, but you're making some sweeping general statements about
things that are simply not applicable except to the relatively narrow
world in which you operate. I'm just trying to point out that the vast
majority of computer users see things rather differently than you do,
and have different needs. You don't have to emulate them, but if would
make for a clearer conversation if you recognized their existence.
Jerry Avins
...
> Why would I want to communicate with non-technical people?
>
> IMO, the best way to communicate with non-technical people is by
> beating them with a stick.
You must have a dreary social life.
...
Hugh Aguilar
> > Why would I want to communicate with non-technical people?
>
> You may not, but you're making some sweeping general statements about
> things that are simply not applicable except to the relatively narrow
> world in which you operate. I'm just trying to point out that the vast
> majority of computer users see things rather differently than you do,
> and have different needs. You don't have to emulate them, but if would
> make for a clearer conversation if you recognized their existence.
I actually have experience working as a CSR (customer service rep). I
was being rather flippant in the above post, but I am capable of being
diplomatic when my paycheck depends upon it.
I worked for almost two years as an IBM370 assembly-language
programmer. This was for junk-mail processing; the company that I
worked for had one of the much-coveted licenses from the Post Office
that allows it to get substantially reduced postage rates. Considering
that our customers were direct-mail marketers, you can imagine what
blithering idiots they were. I often had to be my own CSR because none
of the CSRs could make any sense of what the customer was talking
about, and so they would just bail out and leave me to be both the CSR
and the programmer. One time I was to write some statistics software
for one of our biggest clients. I'm not exactly an expert on
statistics, considering that I only have a H.S. education, but I do
know the rudiments. It was obvious to me that what they wanted done
was utter nonsense. I didn't say anything; I just implemented it as
they told me to. That was pretty scary though. I expected somebody to
say, "Hey, this is utter nonsense!" (the emperor has no clothes), at
which time I would certainly get the blame. Nobody said anything, and
the customer paid their bill, so that was a big relief. The customers
were always trying to intimidate me by telling me that they play golf
with my boss every weekend and can get me fired with a single word.
That was baloney. They were trying to get me to write more software
than they had contracted for, but I never let them push me around. I
was fairly good at my job but then the company went out of business,
and that was the end of that. Now I work as a cab-driver and I have to
deal with customers who try to leave the cab without paying. Its
pretty much the same as being a CSR, except now I have weapons. These
include an electric stun-gun, a large mag-lite and (worst-case
scenario) a .38-special revolver. I'm very diplomatic; I never raise
my voice --- staying calm and relaxed is what diplomacy is all about.
Bernd Paysan
>> If so, how'd they become a financial monopoly? How'd their profit
>> margins reach 67% or higher?
>
> Where'd you get that figure? MSFT reported an annualized quarterly
> profit of 27.66% for its last quarter (ending 9/30). That's quite good
> compares with the industry average of 11.23%, but nothing like what
> you're quoting.
That's because MSFT has added a lot of business units under Ballmer, which
don't repeat the successes of the Windows and the Office business unit
(these two are the cash cows of MSFT, and they make profit margins in the
2/3 range). When you want to ruin Microsoft, you only have to buy an Xbox
and a Zune.
--
Bernd Paysan
"If you want it done right, you have to do it yourself"
http://www.jwdt.com/~paysan/
Marc Olschok
> "Hugh Aguilar" <hugoa...@rosycrew.com> wrote in message
>
> Why? Nobody _wants_ stuff in that format, or .ps, or .doc. If it's not
> ASCII or .pdf, I really don't want to see it at all. I make an exception
> for .html.
Well, you do not need to read the TeX/LaTeX source of a document.
It is a typesetting program and people quite often produce PDF nowadays.
See <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TeX>
and <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LaTeX>
--
Marc
Hugh Aguilar
> Rod Pemberton <do_not_h...@nohavenot.cmm> wrote:
> > "Hugh Aguilar" <hugoagui...@rosycrew.com> wrote in message
> >[...]
> > > I use LaTeX/KILE all of the time.
>
> > Why? Nobody _wants_ stuff in that format, or .ps, or .doc. If it's not
> > ASCII or .pdf, I really don't want to see it at all. I make an exception
> > for .html.
>
> Well, you do not need to read the TeX/LaTeX source of a document.
> It is a typesetting program and people quite often produce PDF nowadays.
> See <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TeX>
> and <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LaTeX>
Typically, postscript is used only when you are ready to go to paper.
DVI (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DVI_(file_format)) is used for
passing documents around on the internet, and PDF is used for passing
documents to non-technical people who don't know what DVI is. In my
experience, a DVI file will be less than 1/2 the size of a PDF file
for the same document.
Back in the late 1980s (with the introduction of the HP laser-jet) and
through the late 1990s, people communicated with paper. That was when
desktop publishing was the killer-app of the Macintosh/laserwriter
package. Now people communicate over the internet. All of this talk
about Microsoft Word versus LaTeX is largely irrelevant because the
modern world is focused on web design. Knowing LaTeX isn't helping me
find a job --- nobody cares about that kind of thing anymore. Most of
the remaining interest in document formatting seems to be in Germany,
but few Americans even know how to spell LaTeX.
Sometimes PDF files are put on websites, but they tend to be too big,
and they take too long to download. It is a mystery to me why PDF
became the standard when we already had DVI that does the same thing
in a smaller file.
Rod Pemberton
>
> Typically, postscript is used only when you are ready to go to paper.
> DVI (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DVI_(file_format)) is used for
> passing documents around on the internet, and PDF is used for passing
> documents to non-technical people who don't know what DVI is.
>
What a load...
Are PHD's and graduate students non-technical? Take a repository for
academic papers: CiteSeer. CiteSeer converts everything to .pdf or .ps.
I'm curious. When was the last time you found any technical document not in
.pdf? How old was it? Where was it from: Internet, internal corporate,
external company?
> Knowing LaTeX isn't helping me find a job ...
Duh.
RP: "Nobody _wants_ stuff in that format ..."
> It is a mystery to me why PDF
> became the standard when we already had DVI that does the same thing
> in a smaller file.
MS-DOS. No? Market share. No? The IBM PC won the personal computer
market through attrition of other personal computer platforms. I.e., no
other computing platforms manufactured in high volumes existed anymore,
circa '94 (no Amiga's, no Apple's, no Mac's, no Commodore's, no Atari's, no
Sinclair's, no etc). Corporate computing platforms, such as those that ran
Unix, weren't widespread enough or popular enough to standardize, i.e.,
"defacto", a format. You don't agree? Why did Postscript die out? It was
just as functional as .pdf (and includes a subset of it). The answer is
Postscript was only supported on Unix and via printers with expensive
emulation boards, while a .pdf reader was freely available on PC's. What PC
had Postscript? We had to wait until Ghostscript was ported to Windows.
The port didn't work that well. Still doesn't. Now that .pdf is an ISO
standard. It'll be around for quite some time. As for the expensive
Postscript printers, the low cost solution always wins in computing, except
for Microsoft, Intel, and the repeatedly resurrected SCSI. Who's a
monopoly?
Rod Pemberton
Aleksej Saushev
>>It is way easier to speculate basing on propaganda rather than investigating anything on your own.
>
> And where would we find this information? From Russian sources?
>
> If so, how are we to know its real? Stalin had a nice habit of re-
> writing historical documents, official documents, and even having
> photographs changed when it was prudent to do so.
Which historical documents were rewritten?
> Want an example? May I suggest you look into what happened to 5000
> Polish military officers after Russia invaded Poland? You might want
> to look at the records that were created, in all their names, showing
> their 'release' back to Poland. Of course, in actuality, they were all
> shot at Lubyanka.
Now that's nice! Ever tried to check your own sources?
In your attitude to juggling facts you're more inclined to believe Gebbels
than Stalin. Maybe you should start believing in Ariyan Power or whatever
it is called.
> Of course, when they failed to turn up back home, the Russian line was
> "Well, they must have gone somewhere else". Eventually the mass graves
> were discovered by the Germans, and their uncovering filmed to serve
> as documentary evidence.
And Germans in 1942 were so much objective with respect to anything Soviet.
> My point being, while yes, there is certainly an alternative point of
> view, any Russian evidence or historical literature is generally
> perceived to be discredited or at least questionable, because the
> Party had a rather convenient habit of changing official documents and
> statements to suit their needs.
Which documents were changed? Decisions of Party Congress?
Decisions of Politburo?
> Even the literature and the music of
> the time had be passed by Government committee censors to make sure it
> followed party dictum (though Russia was not alone in this, I believe
> the situation was the same in Nazi Germany).
Which literature or music didn't? U.S. American?
> I'm not saying that I am right and you are wrong. I'm only saying it
> is difficult to believe/rely on official Russian accounts as facts.
Use other available accounts.
> I have worked in nearly all the CIS countries. I speak some Russian. On
> my travels, I have met many Russians, Georgians, Kazakhs, Uzbkeks and
> Azeris that admire and hate Stalin in equal measure. There are
> certainly two sides to every story. It's knowing what to believe that
> is the difficult bit!
What amuses me is that neither of those ethnicities were "persecuted" as
you'd like to say. I've talked to those very Malqars who were in exile.
--
HE CE3OH...
Albert van der Horst
Rod Pemberton <do_no...@nohavenot.cmm> wrote:
>standard. It'll be around for quite some time. As for the expensive
>Postscript printers, the low cost solution always wins in computing, except
>for Microsoft, Intel, and the repeatedly resurrected SCSI. Who's a
>monopoly?
It is not clear what you are suggesting.
My Brother personal printer sports postscript, so postscript is dead?
PDF is closely related to postscript.
(It also prints,scans and faxes double sided. It costs a fraction
of my first 5by7 capitals-only second hand matrix printer.)
With regard pdf. My ciforth documentation is about as compact
in pdf as in ps. (1 Mb for 140 pages).
Bloated pdf comes from scanning printed datasheets, then use the
pictures. 3 Mbyte information about a digital watch, but at least you
have the information.
>Rod Pemberton
Groetjes Albert
--
--
Albert van der Horst, UTRECHT,THE NETHERLANDS
Economic growth -- being exponential -- ultimately falters.
albert@spe&ar&c.xs4all.nl &=n http://home.hccnet.nl/a.w.m.van.der.horst
Aleksej Saushev
> Aleksej Saushev <as...@inbox.ru> wrote:
>> Oh, another layman historian.
>
> Yes, I treasure my amateur status.
>
>> Second, who exactly was "purged" before Hitler invasion?
>>
>> Note that it is that very officer corps made army soldiers untrained.
>> That army command you're talking about was unable to put troops on
>> alert. Navy command did it and succeeded in it, even though they
>> weren't specifically told to do so. Army and air force command failed
>> to make their units to obey their own orders during spring 1941, most
>> of this information (if not all) is open, you can go and read it.
>
> It is always risky to speculate about how the history would inevitably
> have happened if things were different. Americans tend to guess that the
> trained military officers who were purged would have done a better job
> of fighting Hitler than their less-trained replacements. But who knows,
> really? The more important point to Stalin is that the old officers were
> not loyal to him, and they might have caused some sort of trouble. My
> claim is that for Stalin personally that fact trumps any amount of
> competence at fighting germany. What good was it for Stalin if the USSR
> stopped the german invasion but he personally did not live to see it?
There's one subtlety you don't take into account.
Consider that an old bolshevik at high post doesn't like Stalin to the
extent that he decides to commit sabotage. When police catches saboteur
and punishes him according to contemporary laws (death penalty), you say
that's because this saboteur isn't loyal to Stalin. Quite reasonable.
Number of attending students is determined by water level in Danube.
>> Note, that exactly those army commanders were on Finnish war a year
>> before, thus they should've had real experience.
>>
>> You may think that it is because all those officers who could were
>> purged. Not at all. All of west border commanders were high deserved
>> ones, they fought in Spain and in Karelia. Chief of General Staff at
>> the time was famous Zhukov who is praised for his talents.
>
> And Zhukov found his opening for promotions because of previous purges.
So did Kuznetsov following your logic. Even more so, because Meretskov
survived "the great purge" and Frinovsky didn't.
>> Stalin got highly corrupt country, where crime was _profession_,
>
> The USA doesn't have as much of a criminal culture. Traditionally recent
> immigrants who were discriminated against would develop one, and then
> within a couple of generations as they were accepted into traditional
> well-paying jobs they would tend to give it up. There was an irish
> mafia, an italian/sicilian mafia, a chinese mafia, a korean mafia, and
> each one dwindles away as better opportunities open up. It's
> particularly over the last 30 or so years that the USA has been
> developing a permanent criminal class, with members who accept prison as
> just an occupational hazard. Largely black, people who have no better
> prospect than crime which does not actually pay very well....
Compare that to Russia, where we had this culture since early XX
all through Civil War when it fluorished and through Stalin times
when it was almost eradicated only to be restored by Khrushchov.
In addition to this criminal culture there's another half-criminal one,
e.g. where bribe is considered normal way to deal even though it is
forbidden by law and where stealing state or large corporation property
is "a matter of honour" rather than crime. You only are not to be caught.
>> Of course,
>> it is hard to imagine, how it dared to send into jail not only robbers
>> but all those saboteurs and even corrupt officers. All of those were
>> high deserved "Old Bolsheviks." As if that makes it impossible to
>> receive bribes.
>
> I am not ready to argue whether the purges were better for the USSR than
> any other alternative. My claim is that it was irrelevant whether the
> purges were good for the USSR. Stalin thought they were good for him
> personally, and no one was ready to oppose him. I believe that is the
> way things get done in most governments most of the time. One ideology
> may be better than another, but the effect of ideology on government is
> usually far less than the effect of perceived self-interest by people
> who have power.
How do you know what he thought? Did he confess it to you?
There are number of facts how various people opposed Stalin and got
their point of view recognized and defended. Of course this isn't
popular reading too, one can't allow some successful statesmen to have
their comminication abilities recognized. Stalin is bad, period.
>> Fifth, objectively there was no other person to replace Stalin.
>> The political situation in early 1930s was so that any top person
>> had real chances to be killed if he was against "Old Bolsheviks",
>> they couldn't do anything, all development stalled, and Stalin had
>> to fight against them just to do anything except making their life
>> better (by the time "Old Bolsheviks" lived in luxury even when Russia
>> was in hunger). And this situation changed slowly till late 1940s.
>
> Now it is your turn in the barrel. You say that there was no alternative
> to Stalin, and that Stalin did the best work possible given the problems
> he was facing. When you claim that no alternative could have been
> better, you are arguing about how things had to be if they were
> different. You are probably wrong, but how could anyone ever find out
> for sure?
What are proposed alternatives to Stalin?
Trotsky? He couldn't manage any narkomat immediatly after the Civil War.
Tukhachevsky? He was accused in building a military plot, consequences
of the plot are hardly predictable.
Dzerzhinsky? He was one of the most productive statesmen at that time,
he had built police, railways and telecommunications from nothing,
but he died from heart attack.
Kirov? He was assassinated in 1934, and many facts point to his
pro-Stalin views.
>> Sixth. Churchill, de Gaulle, Harriman admitted that Stalin's rule was
>> an unbelievable success for Russia and its inabitants. Probably those
>> persons' opinions are more valuable. Do you think that you or other
>> layman historians are smarter than British prime minister? French
>> President? U.S.A. ambassador to U.S.S.R.? Maybe this should make you
>> to correct your beliefs somehow.
>
> I believe that I and many other amateurs are far more honest than the
> british prime minister, the french president, etc. Those were people who
> knew government secrets and couldn't talk about them because they must
> remain secret. They had to carefully adjust their language in case
> someone thought they were being expedient. And of course all of them
> were living in a fantasy land, where they had to guess what might
> happen. To some extent we know what did happen. So for example, was
> Stalin right to depend on his nonagression pact with Hitler? If it had
> held he would have been in far better shape, he could keep the bulk of
> his armor in the east facing off japan etc. Looking back, it is obvious
> that Hitler was losing the arms race and needed to attack as soon as he
> could -- the more he delayed the stronger russia would be. But that's
> only obvious looking back. When the russians showed german experts their
> new weapons and germany had nothing comparable to show the russian
> experts, should russians have guessed that germany was falling behind?
> Or should they have guessed that Hitler was not showing them everything?
> Hindsight is so much easier....
Stalin had to depend on non-agression pact after British and French
failed to provide reasonable conditions of mutual aid in view of war
break out. And this was diplomatic victory at that time. It provided
some time to modernize army. You just don't know what was Red Army in
1939 and what it became in 1941. Air Force was technologically renewed
in these two years, all new fighters were designed during summer 1939 --
winter 1940. Same applies to armoured force, production of KV tanks
started in 1939, T-34 was finished late in spring 1940 and made into
production early in fall of the same 1940. It is clear to see that
before this Soviet jump of 1939-1941 Hitler didn't lose arms race.
Not at all.
>> > And compared to Stalinist Russia we're doing pretty good! Say what
>> > you want about our federal government, still it can get a whole lot
>> > worse.
>>
>> Compared to Stalin's Russia you live in quite a different time.
>
> Yes we do! And we have the example of Stalin's russia to remind us that
> things can get a whole lot worse.
We have example of modern Russia to see how things can be worse,
there's no need to refer to Stalin.
--
HE CE3OH...
Aleksej Saushev
> On Nov 16, 12:46О©╫am, Aleksej Saushev <a...@inbox.ru> wrote:
>> Oh, another layman historian.
>
> As you consider yourself to be more than a layman in regard to Russian
> history, perhaps you could answer a question for me. I have read that
> Russia won the Battle of Stalingrad primarily because an outbreak of
> Tuleremia (a disease related to bubonic plague) decimated the German
> troops. There is suspicion that this was a bio-weapon for these
> reasons:
>
> 1.) It hit the Germans disproportionately compared to the Russions.
> Given the close proximity of the soldiers in the city, this was
> unrealistic.
>
> 2.) There were reports of Russian airplanes seen dusting the German
> soldiers with some kind of fine powder.
>
> 3.) Tuleremia is a disease of the jungle. There are no other examples
> of a Tuleremia outbreak in even moderately cool climates, and
> certainly not in the notoriously cold Russia.
>
> The idea is that Russia resorted to a bio-weapon in Stalingrad because
> Stalingrad is geographically isolated and there was little chance of
> "blowback," in the sense of the disease making its way to Russian
> population centers such as Moscow. Besides that, the Russians were
> going to lose Stalingrad anyway, so if all of the citizens there died
> of Tuleremia the effect would be the same as if Germany captured the
> city and killed the citizens in a death camp.
>
> Is there any truth to this suspicion?
I have no interest to comment this idiocy.
You haven't tried reading basics.
You can try to start here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stalingrad_battle#Importance_of_Stalingrad
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stalingrad_battle#The_Sixth_Army_encircled
--
HE CE3OH...
Jonah Thomas
Under the circumstances it was also reasonable to eliminate likely
saboteurs before they actually succeded in causing large amounts of
damage. The USA has been backward about this, we officially believe in
individual rights and believe that we should not punish people until
after they actually commit a crime. We have been slowly backing away
from this stand as we have come to realise how impractical it is. Our
approach has typically been to remove privileges from people who may not
deserve them, rather than appy punishments.
So for example people who do not seem completely reliable are not
allowed to fly as passengers on commercial airlines. If the government
decides that you are not completely reliable or that someone with a
similar name to yours is not completely reliable there is no particular
way for you to appeal their decision. But it is not so important; riding
in airplanes is a privilege and not a right. My wife has not flown for
nearly nine years. We were traveling with our baby daughter and at the
flight gate the security people had set up a procedure where they rolled
dice to decide which passengers would be strip-searched. The dice told
them to search our baby, and they grabbed her out of the mother's hands
and then were very uncertain what to do. A baby wearing only a diaper.
After a couple of minutes arguing back and forth they settled for
peeking
inside the diaper and then handed her back. My wife decided that this
was not something she was willing to put up with. She has never again
bought an airline ticket.
In my state, when a citizen is convicted of a drug crime, for the first
offense on top of any other punishment he loses his driver's license.
After six months he can apply for a new one. For a second offense the
driver's license is lost for years. It is hard for most adults to live
without an automobile here; they must carefully choose a place to live
and the majority of jobs are not really open to people who don't drive.
But a person who sells drugs might be using them himself and so be a
menace to society if he drives, and after all driving an automobile is a
privilege and not a right.
We obviously can't let spies or saboteurs do their dirty work first and
then catch and convict them, so we have an elaborate system to keep
untrusted people away from things that are important to the government.
If you get hired to do sensitive government work, your employer must ask
for a security clearance for you. They must pay to have you
investigated; I don't know the cost now but some years ago it was around
$50,000. The investigation will take six months to a year and during
that time you cannot do the work you were hired for. Needless to say,
employers prefer to hire people who already have security clearances.
You are not allowed to request a security clearance for yourself even if
you pay for it, only your employer can do that. This is one of the
possible perqs of military service -- if you join the army and the army
chooses to get you a security clearance, then you are pretty much
guaranteed high-paying jobs when you leave the army.
A Washington DC security guard told me that the people in the US
government who make the decision about security clearances are almost
all Mormons -- members of a fanciful religion who have the reputation
for thinking literally and unimaginatively in secular situations. And he
claimed that increasingly, security guards whose security clearances are
approved are also Mormons. If you have special technical knowledge you
can get a security clearance without being Mormon, but if you are just a
security guard it's harder. I have found no particular confirmation of
this rumor, but I note that it's the sort of thing that is likely to
happen when you set up an elaborate system of privilege. And of course
getting a security clearance is a privilege and not a right.
> >> Note, that exactly those army commanders were on Finnish war a year
> >> before, thus they should've had real experience.
> >>
> >> You may think that it is because all those officers who could were
> >> purged. Not at all. All of west border commanders were high
> >> deserved ones, they fought in Spain and in Karelia. Chief of
> >General> Staff at the time was famous Zhukov who is praised for his
> >talents.
> >
> > And Zhukov found his opening for promotions because of previous
> > purges.
>
> So did Kuznetsov following your logic. Even more so, because Meretskov
> survived "the great purge" and Frinovsky didn't.
Yes. I should admit that I do not follow the details enough to even know
all the famous names you mention.
> >> Stalin got highly corrupt country, where crime was _profession_,
> >
> > The USA doesn't have as much of a criminal culture. Traditionally
> > recent immigrants who were discriminated against would develop one,
> > and then within a couple of generations as they were accepted into
> > traditional well-paying jobs they would tend to give it up. There
> > was an irish mafia, an italian/sicilian mafia, a chinese mafia, a
> > korean mafia, and each one dwindles away as better opportunities
> > open up. It's particularly over the last 30 or so years that the USA
> > has been developing a permanent criminal class, with members who
> > accept prison as just an occupational hazard. Largely black, people
> > who have no better prospect than crime which does not actually pay
> > very well....
>
> Compare that to Russia, where we had this culture since early XX
> all through Civil War when it fluorished and through Stalin times
> when it was almost eradicated only to be restored by Khrushchov.
The USA had small numbers of these same people.
http://www.gypsyloresociety.org/cultureintro.html
During about the same time as Stalin's persecution, Hitler also tried to
exterminate the Roma and did kill considerable numbers of them. Without
knowing the details, I would think that if you want to exterminate a
culture it would be harder to exterminate a culture which values theft,
swindling, and misrepresentation of all sorts than to exterminate one
which is more straightforward. And so it seems unlikely to me that
Stalin almost succeeded in killing them off and then Khruschev brought
them back. If Stalin had actually almost succeeded in genociding them,
there would be only a few left and it would take a long time for them to
recover.
> In addition to this criminal culture there's another half-criminal
> one, e.g. where bribe is considered normal way to deal even though it
> is forbidden by law and where stealing state or large corporation
> property is "a matter of honour" rather than crime. You only are not
> to be caught.
Yes. The USA doesn't have much of that yet, but we're getting more.
There is the drug culture where bribery is normal; our police seem to
prefer to have an established chain of dealers to work with, and once
they choose one then they accept payment to eliminate competitors to
their protected drug dealers. (I don't actually know anything much about
that, of course. The policemen and self-claimed drug dealers who have
talked to me about it must all be considered unreliable. I tend more to
believe the several children of policemen who told me that anyone who
claims to be police and who reveals secrets must be a fake, that the
real police have a code of silence and anyone who blabs actual secrets
will be killed.) And of course various US industries legally take
government resources, and no one particularly thinks badly about them
since they pay the US legislature to give them forests and watersheds
etc to use up.
> >> Of course,
> >> it is hard to imagine, how it dared to send into jail not only
> >> robbers but all those saboteurs and even corrupt officers. All of
> >> those were high deserved "Old Bolsheviks." As if that makes it
> >> impossible to receive bribes.
> >
> > I am not ready to argue whether the purges were better for the USSR
> > than any other alternative. My claim is that it was irrelevant
> > whether the purges were good for the USSR. Stalin thought they were
> > good for him personally, and no one was ready to oppose him. I
> > believe that is the way things get done in most governments most of
> > the time. One ideology may be better than another, but the effect of
> > ideology on government is usually far less than the effect of
> > perceived self-interest by people who have power.
>
> How do you know what he thought? Did he confess it to you?
> There are number of facts how various people opposed Stalin and got
> their point of view recognized and defended. Of course this isn't
> popular reading too, one can't allow some successful statesmen to have
> their comminication abilities recognized. Stalin is bad, period.
It is plausible to me that my claim is true most of the time, not just
for Stalin. Stalin makes a good example for people who are ready to
believe he cared about staying alive. And the reasoning is sound -- even
if Stalin cared more about Russia than about his own life, still if he
did something that got him killed and replaced by somebody more-or-less
at random, what's the chance that Russia would be better off? Stalin
could only do the best job he could for Russia while he stayed alive and
in power. So his first duty was to stay alive and in power, and anything
else he did for Russia had to come in his spare time.
> >> Fifth, objectively there was no other person to replace Stalin.
> >> The political situation in early 1930s was so that any top person
> >> had real chances to be killed if he was against "Old Bolsheviks",
> >> they couldn't do anything, all development stalled, and Stalin had
> >> to fight against them just to do anything except making their life
> >> better (by the time "Old Bolsheviks" lived in luxury even when
> >> Russia was in hunger). And this situation changed slowly till late
> >> 1940s.
> >
> > Now it is your turn in the barrel. You say that there was no
> > alternative to Stalin, and that Stalin did the best work possible
> > given the problems he was facing. When you claim that no alternative
> > could have been better, you are arguing about how things had to be
> > if they were different. You are probably wrong, but how could anyone
> > ever find out for sure?
>
> What are proposed alternatives to Stalin?
>
> Trotsky? He couldn't manage any narkomat immediatly after the Civil
> War. Tukhachevsky? He was accused in building a military plot,
> consequences of the plot are hardly predictable.
> Dzerzhinsky? He was one of the most productive statesmen at that time,
> he had built police, railways and telecommunications from nothing,
> but he died from heart attack.
> Kirov? He was assassinated in 1934, and many facts point to his
> pro-Stalin views.
If Stalin had a "heart attack" then someone would have shown up to
replace him. Maybe somebody you never heard of, somebody who had been
careful not to look too important while Stalin was purging potential
competitors. This is something that happens. Leaders are not the least
bit irreplaceable. It looked for a while like there was no alternative
to Milton Obote in uganda, but suddenly one day Idi Amin was in charge.
It looked like there was no alternative to Sadat in egypt, but suddenly
Mubarak took over and at the moment it appears there is no possible
alternative to Mubarak.
It is not hard to replace national leaders. Though of course you get pot
luck when they do get replaced.
And the invasion came in 1941? I don't see that you disagree with me.
But could Stalin have done more to prepare for the breakdown of the
nonaggression pact, without causing it to break down earlier?
Hindsight is so easy. They got a bad outcome, they should have avoided
that bad outcome, here's what they should have done to deal with the bad
thing that happened. Looking forward is so much harder -- there are lots
of different bad outcomes available and how do you prevent them all?
> >> > And compared to Stalinist Russia we're doing pretty good! Say
> >> > what you want about our federal government, still it can get a
> >> > whole lot worse.
> >>
> >> Compared to Stalin's Russia you live in quite a different time.
> >
> > Yes we do! And we have the example of Stalin's russia to remind us
> > that things can get a whole lot worse.
>
> We have example of modern Russia to see how things can be worse,
> there's no need to refer to Stalin.
It's hard to tell what is happening in russia today. I think it is
vaguely possible that russia might turn out OK. Solve their various
problems, get increasing prosperity, better technical education and
increasing technological innovation, and the more things start to work
well the more incentive there is for russians to make more things work
well also. Given my limited knowledge I can't say it's impossible. From
what I've seen it looks extremely unlikely, but I don't know much.
But americans have clear ideas about stalinist russia. No way to tell
how well those ideas fit the reality, but the ideas are clear. Each of
the bad things that happened there, could happen here in a different
form.
Brad
[...a lot of stuff...]
What's your Forth experience? As I recall, you go way back. I like to
keep track of Forthers with too much time on their hands.
-Brad
Bernd Paysan
> So for example people who do not seem completely reliable are not
> allowed to fly as passengers on commercial airlines. If the government
> decides that you are not completely reliable or that someone with a
> similar name to yours is not completely reliable there is no particular
> way for you to appeal their decision. But it is not so important; riding
> in airplanes is a privilege and not a right.
You have been severely brainwashed. Come on, we here in Germany just
celebrated 20 years of fall of the wall, and the right to travel *is* a
basic right, and the east Germans fought for it for 40 years. I know, AFAIK
80% of the US Americans never leave their country, and another 10% only as
soldier, but the rest of the industrial world travels around to other
countries frequently. Flying is cost and time efficient for longer
distances, and therefore not being allowed to fly is taking away a liberty -
free movement of persons. You can deprive people of liberties only with a
regular trial.
I won't stand up for your rights - it's your country. If you don't stand up
for your rights, then let it be that. Remember the Chinese: They were the
most powerful, the most developed nation between the Han and in the middle
of the Ming dynasty, and then they decided to destroy their fleet, build a
wall and close down travel to and from foreign countries, and just 400 years
later, they were one of the poorest and most backward country in the world.
Today, development of civilization is much accelerated, so I guess if
America closed down the gates (and they are already building a real wall!)
it would take much less time to third world as it took for China.
When I was a politician with good humor, and visiting Mexico, I'd go to the
wall and shout "Mr. Obama, tear down this wall!" This sort of fencing is
shameful.